The Zodiac Imperative
by Fritz Baugh
Summary: June 1991:Timeline Year 9. Something is brewing in the skies...something that even the Ghostbusters, the Prince of Warlocks, and the Archmage of the Winds might not have the power to defeat. An ancient force has arisen, with Judgement as its imperative.
1. Chapter 1

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Part One**

By Fritz Baugh  
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

_Legal Stuff that's Boring Unless You're Louis Tully..._

**Ghostbusters** is1984 Columbia Pictures. **Ghostbusters 2** is 1989 Columbia Pictures **The Real Ghostbusters** is 1986 Columbia Pictures Television and DiC Productions. **Extreme Ghostbusters** is 1997 Columbia Pictures Television and Adelaide Productions. No use of characters and images associated with the above is intended for profit, or to challenge the copyrights of the above holders. Characters not appearing in the above copyrighted works are to be considered Fritz Baugh and/or their respective creators. The Inquisitors © OgreBBQ. Zandrik Fallagar, Nodus, Lydia Van Horn © Fritz Baugh

* * *

_Preamble_

Look to the night skies, for there be the stars  
They comfort and guide us  
The poets write of their glory  
Lovers embrace under their glow  
They dare us to penetrate their mysteries  
But be wary  
For the Turning of the Age is at hand  
The Judgement  
In the name of the Great Xodiac, and Iaoue the One  
The stars will decide  
Pray they are not angry

--An obscure passage reputedly from the _Codex of Qizzon_, holy book of lost Atlantis.

* * *

** Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline Year Nine; June 1991 CE  
Rockefeller Center**

* * *

"And from the home office, Top Ten Reasons Manuel Noriega Should Get the Death Penalty..." 

The audience roared with laughter as David Letterman read the topic.

"Hah hah hah...I think the audience likes the topic, Paul. Here we go, Top Ten Reasons Manuel Noriega Should Get the Death Penalty..."

"Number Ten: Infringed copyrights of Banana Republic"

"Number Nine: Clearasil endorsement deal gone wrong"

"Number Eight: Kept cutting lines at Panama City McDonald's, claiming 'Dictator Priviledge' "

"Number Seven: Could complete poker foursome of Nikolai Ceauceascu, Ferdinand Marcos, and Ayatollah Khomeini."

"Number Six..."

Letterman's voice trailed off as suddenly an unnatural wind filled the room. "Hal, did Biff Henderson have Mexican for dinner again?"

Suddenly, three spectral shapes appeared. Ferdinand Marcos, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Nikolai Ceauceascu.

"You've made jokes at our expense for the last time, Infidel Dog..." the Ayatollah spat. "Consider this a fatwa, Funny Boy..."

In the control room, Hal Gurnee calmly grabbed the phone...

* * *

A pudgy hand placed the mobile phone back in it's cradle. "Wow!!! Three Class Fours are attacking David Letterman!!! This is great!!!"

"Not if you like Letterman..." a smooth voice answered.

"Arsenio's better anyway..." a third voice broke in.

"We gotta go on a bust? But I gotta pee..." a fourth voice whined.

"We can't stop now, and time's a wasting!!! Floor it, Z!!!" the first voice said, excitedly.

* * *

"Now we do Stupid Ghost Trick" The Ayatollah was saying, dragging Letterman by the ankle. "We throw infidel out of five story building and see how high he bounces..."

"Boys boys boys boys..." a smooth voice broke in. "You know Stupid Ghost Tricks aren't until Thursday--and we can't have you go screwing up the schedule."

The crowd cheered as a man walked out of the same door guests came from. Handsome, with brown hair and piercing green eyes, he was wearing a brown flight suit with blue-green trim on the cuffs and collar, and a bulky pack of electronic gear on his back. A nametag on his chest read "VENKMAN"

"Don't move!!!" A second voice broke in, the two doors to the audience exits flying open to allow two more men to enter the room. They wore the same flight suits and electronic packs as the first man, but had the gun-like throwers in their hands. The one who spoke was slightly pudgy, a set of goggles perched atop his forehead, partially obscuring his auburn hair. His flight suit was tan, with brown trim, and his nametag read "STANTZ"

Next to him was a muscular man of African descent. His suit was aqua, with red trim. His nametag read "ZEDDEMORE"

Everybody turned as a loud noise came from the last door, the one to the side room, a thud and and an aggravated obscenity. The door flew open a few seconds later to admit a short man with close-cropped brown hair, large eyeglasses, and a green flight suit with purple trim. "TULLY" was the name on his chest. He yanked his thrower off his pack, and turned it once in his arms, like he was trying to be sure it was facing the right direction.

"Who are these jackasses?" Ceauceascu snarled.

"The UN War Crimes tribunal sent us." Winston Zeddemore deadpanned.

"So we can do this the easy way or the hard way..." Peter Venkman informed them. "The easy way, where you drop Dave and get into the trap like good little undead tyrants, or the hard way...where we have to blast you, but it ends the same way."

"Get them!!!' the Ayatollah snarled.

Winston and Ray Stantz opened fire; having some eight years of practice at it (minus a court-mandated sabbatical) they caught the two in confinement streams with almost zero effort. "You can tell they always had toadies to do their dirty work, can't you?" Ray smirked. "Louis?"

Louis Tully fired his beam, but it went wide--nearly neutronizing Anton Figg.

Winston sent out a ghost trap, and the two screaming tyrants (trying to offer their captives money, girls, or anything they might want to just _let them go_) were sucked into it.

"Looks like it's just you, Ayatollah." Venkman smirked.

The Ayatollah dangled Letterman by his ankle. "Be warned, Infidel Sorcerer...if you value this worthless life stay back..."

Venkman looked over to stage right abruptly. "What??? Salman Rushdie??? Nobody told me he was going to be on the show tonight???"

The Ayatollah dropped Letterman from the shock of the statement. "Rushdie??? That Infidel Dog??? I will carry out my _fatwa_ myself!!!"

"Hosed you." Venkman chuckled, blowing the mullah a raspberry as Ray and Winston blasted him. "But you know how it is--sometimes, Shiite happens."

Louis unhooked a ghost trap. "Let me do it Doctor Venkman because I almost toasted Paul Schaffer and the World's Most Dangerous band and I'm really sorry about that and..."

"Just throw the trap, Louis!!!" Venkman cut him off.

Louis twirled the trap like a cowboy about to rope a steer, and let it fly...

...Hitting Winston right in the back of the head.

"...ooops..." Louis said in a small voice.

"Oh fergrife'ssake..." Venkman muttered, pulling his thrower, helping Ray to keep the Ayatollah under confinement; with Winston stunned, he'd almost broke free.

Louis grabbed the trap and ran over to the writhing mullah. "Take this, you jerk!!!" and hit the button on the side, opening the trap.

The Ayatollah was sucked inside, promising that Allah would get his revenge...

"Nice recovery." Venkman admitted. "Though I would recommend staying away from Winston for a while."

"I...can't...see anything..." Louis moaned.

Ray shook his head. "You looked at the trap, didn't you?"

"Was I not supposed to?"

* * *

_ It is time... _

There is a pull in the flow of time and space...

As it was intended, so it shall be done...

Judgment comes... 

Phineus Eventide, Prince of Warlocks, sat bolt upright with such a start that it startled his cat, Tarantula.

"Mrrow?" the cat asked.

"I don't know, Tarantula. But it is quite disturbing. I haven't felt so ill at ease for some eight years..."

"Mrow?"

"No, not even during the rise of Astorath. This is...different..."

Eventide gathered his cloak, and looked into the night skies, the constellation of Aquarius rising over the horizon. A sudden thought hit him.

"The Age...could it be..."

"Mrow."

"I hope I am wrong, Tarantula. But there are those who would know for certain--and I must seek one of them out."

* * *

"And then when we woke up, there was a giant rock monster in the cavern." Janine Melnitz was telling the group around the table. "He was gonna kill us for assaulting the little monsters--his 'children'--but Ray and Winston showed up..."

"Oh, my, were you scared?" Denise Melnitz asked her daughter.

"Nisey, don't interrupt! This is getting good!" Fritz Melnitz broke in. His wife of some forty years shot him a dirty look, causing him to chuckle.

"She's a Ghostbuster, Gram..." Twelve year old Victor Irwin piped up. "It's in the motto--'Ain't Afraid A' No Ghost'. Right Uncle Egon?"

"Well, to say that a Ghostbuster is _never_ afraid would be an untrue assertion, Victor..." Egon Spengler answered.

"Let your aunt finish, Victor." Doris Melnitz Irwin scolded her son.

Janine cleared her throat, and shook her head with mock indignation. "If you're sure...anyway, the thing had us trapped, then Winston and Ray blew its leg off by detonating the pressure tank on Winston's slime blower. Then we buried the cavern by detonating the other pressure tank, so that guy ain't gonna be buggin' anyone for a while."

"Cool..." Victor said. "But back to what you said, Uncle E...you mean there are times you've been afraid?"

"Victor, only a stupid man is never afraid." he said, simply.

"And if there's one word that I'd never associate with Egon, it's 'stupid'..." Janine piped in.

"I admit I was quite afraid the first time I ever went on a bust--the equipment wasn't tested. We weren't even sure if it'd work. And even after we knew it did it was hard to control--as the manager of the Hotel Sedgewick could attest..." Egon continued, drawing a chuckle from the whole group.

"So like which monster scared you the most, Uncle Egon?" Victor asked, quite enthused. "The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Cthulhu? Vigo?"

"Victor..." his father, Joshua Irwin, said in mildy reproachful tones.

"It's all right, Joshua." Egon responded, then pausing before he answered. "All told...I'd have to say the opponent that scared me most was a creature called Makeoverus Lotsabucks."

Janine drew in a quick breath. She looked at Egon with sudden apprehension.

He looked back at her quickly, trying to say with his eyes _No...I won't say the whole reason why..._

"What'd that one do? I never heard about that one on the news..."

"It didn't make the news, Victor." Egon replied. "It tried to hurt your Aunt Janine, you see...and it very nearly succeeded."

"Whoa...but you stopped it, right?"

"Your Aunt and I both stopped it together."

Victor downed another bite and got a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "I knew a long time ago you two were a good team."

* * *

**Long Island**

* * *

She stopped. There was an ill wind in the air all of a sudden. _It's making the hair on the back of my neck stand up...and for me, that's a lot of hair..._

She ran back on all four legs back to the house. Her ward, it had turned out, had inherited quite a fortune after his mother's demise two years ago, and though he had no interest in returning to his childhood home--and the bad memories it held, including his mother's traumatic demise--they were able to procure a nice house far enough from New York City for some measure of quiet, but not so far as to cut them off from their friends.

Her keen senses alerted her to her ward's state--napping, but not restfully. _He probably senses it too..._

She jumped into a second story window and went into the master bedroom. That's where the wolflike creature underwent a transformation...it grew as it stood upright, it's features becoming human, and it's fur disappearing...within seconds, the wolf had become a human being, a woman in her middle 20's, with mixed Hispanic features and long brown hair. She grabbed a robe to quickly cover her naked body, and walked swiftly to the room of her ward.

"Shannon?" she said softly as she knocked on the door.

It opened abruptly. Standing at the other side of the door was a fifteen year old boy with round features and limp blond hair...he was pale, and soaked with sweat.

"Shannon!" she cried, unprepared for her ward's state. "Are you all right?"

"We need to call Peter and the others..." he said, his voice dripping with fear. "Something huge is about to happen...huge..."

"You're scaring me here, Shannon...you talking Astorath big?"

"Irena...I think it's going to be _worse_ than Astorath..."

* * *

"...Despite the...outcome of the meeting, Mister Chiron tells me that Baron Vashnivski will still consider the presented ideas, and will make contact within a month with his final decision." With that, Lydia Van Horn drew a deep breath, and awaited word from her boss. 

Josiah Nodus showed no expression, and remained silent for some fifteen seconds before his response. "Excellant, Miss Van Horn. You've earned a bonus for this one--perhaps even a vacation to a place less...gothic."

"Thank you, Sir."

"You may go."

She simply nodded, and left.

Nodus sat back in his chair, absorbed in his own thoughts. _All went better than I anticipated...Chiron, ever so subtly, revealed himself to me as that which I thought he was...and by his words and actions confirms the Ghostbusters' importance..I could wish he'd been clearer as to how they fit into the Ascension, but this will do for now...and the fact that Vashnnivski didn't summarily dismiss my business propositions is an unexpected--though unecessary--pleasantry..._

He was interrupted from his reverie by a tone.

_It's starting_

He punched the intercomm button on his desk. "Miss Kinkaid, I am not to be interrupted by anyone until further notice."

_"What shall I tell anyone who does try to contact you?"_

"That I have left on an errand of greatest possible importance. And I mean that _no one_ is allowed to disturb me. Is that clear?"

_"Yes Sir"_

"Excellant." With that, he turned off the intercom, and pulled back his left sleeve, revealing a band with lights running across it. "Open gateway to Null Zero."

_confirmed. dimensional shunt online. awaiting final order._

"Execute"

A shimmering, door-shaped hole appeared in the office. Nodus nodded, and stepped into it.

It faded away, leaving the office unoccupied.

* * *

The ECTO-1 pulled into Ghostbuster Central. Ray got out of the driver's seat, while Winston climbed out of the passenger seat holding a bag of ice over the back of his head. Venkman made an exaggerated show of yawning.

"Slimer isn't going to jump and kiss you, Peter?" Ray asked mischievously, going to the back of the car to extract the ghost traps containing the essences of Khomeini, Ceauceasceu, and Marcos.

"I ain't complaining." Venkman responded. "He's probably knocking over a doughnut shop."

"But Peter, since everyone knows he's ours if he does then we have to pay for it..."

Louis Tully peeked from behind the rear driver door.

"Louis, I told you I ain't mad about it." Winston said forcefully. Tully timidly stepped out of the car.

"Any messages, Peter?"

Venkman was at the phone, checking. His face suddenly got very wide. "Just one, but it's a good one: it's Dana."

Dana Barrett had been the Ghostbusters first client back in 1983. She was also Venkman's occassional--and most heartfelt--love interest. They'd broken up badly in 1984; she'd married another man (violinist Andre Wallance), borne his son Oscar, and divorced him before reentering Venkman's life in late 1988. She'd recieved a lucrative offer from the LA Symphony Orchestra not long after, and after some soul searching Peter and Dana agreed that she should take it. They'd kept in touch ever since, though.

"She says she's accrued some leave time...she's gonna come to New York for a while in the fall to see her parents and me. And all the rest of you guys, too, I guess."

Winston put a hand on Venkman's shoulder. "Great to hear, Man. You could use a visit from her--keep you from chasing the sub shop girls."

"Well, at least while she's looking..." Venkman smirked.

Ray looked over at Louis, who strangely enough looked even more depressed than before. "Hey, I thought you'd be happy too, Louis--Dana was your neighbor, after all..."

"Oh yeah..." Louis muttered in a small voice. "More salt in the wounds...just what I need..." With that, he plodded toward the stairs. "I'm gonna go change then I'm goin' home..."

"What's up with him?" Winston wondered.

"Who cares?" Venkman snorted. "I gotta see if my best suit is still presentable or if it's too ruined by green slime to wear..."

Ray lingered at the top of the stairway to the downstairs Ecto Containment Unit. _I guess we all forget that Louis knew Dana before we did, and had a bit of a crush on her before Peter and Andre came along...between that and Egon and Janine _finally_ making progress, and us all cheerleading it, it's gotta be hard on him...'losing' two women to Ghostbusters...sometimes I'm amazed he can still stand to work for us..._

* * *

Egon had left the Melnitz apartment to get Janine's car. Doris followed him. "You're really good with Victor, Egon..."

"And I am as amazed by that as anyone." Egon admitted. "Children tend to unnerve me--probably because I was never allowed to be one myself. I told you how my parents didn't believe in toys?"

"Except a Slinky and you straightened it, yeah...but he really looks up to you. 'Uncle Egon the famous Ghostbuster' "

"I don't think your husband is happy about that sometimes."

"Oh, pay Josh no mind...he's just a little jealous of the way Victor idolizes you. But it's been good for him--he's still a handful (that Melnitz DNA after all) but less so than he used to be. 'I gotta get good grades so Uncle Egon don't think I'm stupid or nothin'...bad grammar aside, I think his heart's in the right place."

Egon allowed himself a chuckle. "Uncle Egon...he's been calling me that for quite a while, hasn't he?"

"Pretty much since the first time you met. And let me tell you, I never heard any 'Uncle Paul' or 'Uncle Louis', to give you perspective. It was 'Mister Dumb' and 'Doo Doo Head' "

Egon raised an eyebrow. " 'Doo Doo Head'?"

"Yeah. 'You suck--where's Uncle Egon?' " Doris laughed. "So when are you too gonna make it official, anyway? When are you really gonna be his Uncle Egon?"

"Um..."

Just then, Janine came out of the doorway. "Wha? I thought you were getting the car?"

"I stopped him, Little Sister--my fault. Had to yack." Doris turned back to Egon. "Don't forget what I asked you about. And frankly.." she winked at him. "I think fatherhood is a more natural instinct for you than you realize. Good night."

Janine took Egon's hand as they walked. "What the hell was that about?"

"She was commenting on how well I handle Victor."

"Well...you do..." Janine agreed. They arrived at the VW Beetle.

"Here...you drive..." Janine said, giving him the keys.

"Um...that would seem impractical." he said, getting into the driver's seat anyway. "Since I will be departing at the Firehouse, you would have to change positions to get home..."

She grabbed him, and kissed him full. The passion was obvious. "I got a better idea..." she purred. "Forget the firehouse...just come to my place..."

There was no doubt in his mind what she was proposing.

_This would be the final surrender of all base logic to animalistic urge!!!_ the logical part of his brain was yelling desperately. _Far more rash and impulsive than anything you've ever done!!! I must protest!!! _ In his mind, he could almost see this voice as belonging to Edison Spengler, a manifestation of the strict logic and denial he'd impressed upon Egon. But then there was his mother's words of not too long ago: _Son, even Edison Spengler knew that there was more to life than science. Or you woudn't be here._ Then, in his mind's eye, Peter Venkman appeared and slapped old Edison into a ghost trap. _Don't worry, I'll let him back out in a few hours...now you go and enjoy yourself, Pal..._

_It's been eight f---ing years, Spengs--you're more than ready for it._

"Yes..." he replied huskily, removing his glasses to kiss her more thoroughly. 

_As fortold, the time of Judgment is at hand... _

Lord of the Steady Wind, this Age is thine...

Seek the Avatar chosen for you...

And summon thy brethren and sisters...

* * *

** Brandenburg, Germany**

* * *

The small truck read (in German) "Fine Carpets". It was a shabby old Volkwagon in a rather hideous shade of purple. 

Eventide shook his head as he approached it. He knew the occupant would be well aware of him.

The door at the back opened just as Eventide landed, allowing a head of wild brown hair to peek out, wide blue eyes taking in the scene. He looked to be in his early to mid twenties, with a clean shaven face. A complete contrast to Eventide's large build, thick beard, and bald head.

"Enschulidung? Haben Sie Holstein?"

"I am afraid not." Eventide responded somewhat curtly. "Archmage..."

"It's starting. I know, Phineus." the door opened to allow the man to step out of the truck. He was of average, even slightly scrawny build, dressed in a long purple coat (matching the truck), with khaki pants and a floppy blue tie. Pinned to his lapel was an insignia resembling a backwards letter "P". "I've felt it coming for hours now. I was hoping what the Swimmer said wasn't true..."

"Illogical, Zandrik. You know Lady Delphia verfied the account."

"True enough." the man replied, reaching into the truck and pulling out a staff of gnarled wood that gathered into a shape resembling a shepherd's crook. "But I feel it. Maybe more strongly than anyone else...because, according to Delphia, it _is_ 'my' Age beginning..."

"Then time grows short. We must act." Eventide nodded. "We must find the manifestation point...any thoughts?"

"No. It could really be any ley line nexus on the planet."

Zandrik raised his hands, staff clutched in his left one, and the ring on the middle finger of his right hand began to glow with a violet light. "Let us open our senses together, then, Prince of Warlocks..."

"There is no time to find the others, Archmage..." Eventide stated gravely, his eyes also closing in concentration. "We must hope we are enough..."

* * *

**Stonehenge**

* * *

"I must be bloody insane, taking pictures in the middle of the damn night..." Twenty Six year-old Ben King muttered to himself, changing the film in the camera. _But there's always a spiritual energy surge near midnight, so they say, and I certainly don't want to miss that..._

Always having something of an interest in the occult, it'd gotten stronger since the divorce. _Something to keep my mind at work...something to keep me from remembering how much I miss her...and especially how much I miss Junior..._

_Midnight Greenwich time...in three...two...one..._

The shutter clicked just as Stonehenge exploded with light.

"BLOODY HELL!!!" Ben shouted, and ducked for cover.

There was something there, in the center of the megalith...a vaguely human form, a crackling figure of violet electricity...

_Contact made..._ came a deep voice in Ben's head. From the..thing in the center of Stonehenge?

The form rose into the skies, and then disappeared..leaving only, for a faintest of seconds, a violet trail pointing to the west...

* * *

"Hm...now this is a pleasant surprise, Doctor Spengler..."

"Well, er, Peter gave it to me just before we went off to the Chateau Ritz..."

"So THAT'S what he did...heh heh..."

"Um...yes..."

"Here...let me put it on you..."

"Um...er...oh my..."

"..."

* * *

"Stonehenge!!!" Eventide shouted.

"We must act quickly..." the younger looking man nodded. "We only have a limited amount of time before the avatars are gathered..."

Eventide gestured. "The power of the spell to take us there will leave us below full strength, but we must take that risk--speed is of necessity."

Zandrik nodded. He and Eventide both gestured, and vanished into a display of sparkling light.

* * *

"WOULD SOMEBODY GET THE F---ING PHONE!!!" Venkman shouted.

"I'll get it!!!" Ray shouted. "It might be a call--or Egon!!!"

"He's under standing orders to not come back until at least three AM, remember?" Venkman smirked, inspecting one of his ties.

"Peter--it's Irena Cortez!!!" Ray shouted.

"Irena?" Venkman asked, with equal parts pleasure and trepidation. He nevertheless went downstairs.

"Whoa, whoa, Irena slow down--Peter's here, you want to talk to him?" Ray handed him the phone. "Here..."

"Um...thanks. Irena! So how's it going--Shannon doing okay?"

There was a long pause at the other end. _"No, Peter, he isn't--that's why I called. He's been having some visions...bad ones. He thinks something's starting to happen..he says it's going to be, in his words, worse than Astorath."_

Astorath was a demon that had set into motion a longterm plan to invade Earth. In the mid 1970's, he'd impregnated a human woman with a demonseed to allow him to come to Earth--Shannon Phillips was that child. In the summer of 1989, six months after returning to business, they stopped Astorath and freed Shannon from his power, but not before the demon had turned most of the people on Earth into his slaves for a brief, horrible time.

Irena Cortez was a _Garou_...a genetic werewolf. A few months before Astorath, Irena had been enslaved by a cult; the Ghostbusters freed her, and she later helped them against Astorath. She took Shannon in as her ward, and she and Venkman had had a brief affair after Dana had moved to LA with Oscar.

"Worse than Astorath? Irena, Baby, that is pretty hard to do unless your name is Cthulhu or Gozer..."

_"I know...but Peter...I'm feeling something too...like a sick feeling in my stomach. I'd be willing to bet money that...__something_ is about to happen."

Just about then, several loud alarms started to go off.

"That ain't the Containment alarm..." Winston noted.

Ray ran upstairs. "It's the PKE sensors..."

"Hang on, Irena--I'll call right back."

Venkman and Winston ran after Ray. "Ray, what the hell is going on?"

Ray studied several readouts. "We had the sensors online...we always do this time of year, with the solstice coming and such...oh, wow..."

"Ray, you're getting excited. You know that scares me."

"Just look at this!!! A 200 gev spike in ambient PKE levels in only five minutes--this is incredible!!!"

"So how big a Twinkie we talkin' here?" Winston asked brusquely, his forhead unbiddingly breaking into a small sweat.

"We're not talking Gozer proportions or anything...at least, um, not yet...but..."

" 'Um...' what?"

"It's still climbing."

* * *

"Kylie, dear...you dinner's ready..." she heard her great grandmother's voice say softly.

"Coming, Grandma..." Kylie Griffin replied, turning off the television. The twelve year-old girl (somewhat pale, with long dark hair) went into the kitchen, where her great grandmother was putting the last bowl on the table.

"I heard from your father today.." Grandma told her. "He says he should be able to come home by the end of the week."

"Whatever..." the girl replied, slumping into her seat. 

Rose Lockyer shook her head. Her great granddaughter had been such a happy child at the very first...but then her grandson's divorce, and Kylie's mother pretty much vanishing out of her child's life in a puff of smoke...right around the same time Kylie's one real friend disappeared (the police still hadn't solved that crime now, six years after the fact)...Rose's great granddaughter was beginning to worry her just a little bit.

"Your father works very hard to support you...if he could find a job that let him be home more, he would--you know that."

"Yeah...I guess..." Kylie took another bite. "I don't suppose we'll hear from Mom before the end of the year either...if that early..."

Rather than argue the point, Rose just shook her head. "I suppose not..."

"Fine with me."

Rose felt like she should argue, but her heart wouldn't be in it--she blamed most of it on her former granddaughter-in-law herself, so any defense would ring mostly hollow. Except one "She's still your mother."

"Whatever."

"I need to get you a pet. Maybe then you might understand..." Rose was starting to say when the lights in her apartment began to flicker.

"Another blackout. Great." Kylie snorted.

Then twelve year-old Kylie was violently hit by an arc of violet light, and her body convulsed as though a powerful electrical charge had gone through it. She didn't even seem to have time to scream before she fell to the floor.

Rose, stricken with panic, ran to her great granddaughter's side. "KYLIE!!!" she shouted. _Please let her be all right...if something's happened to her I couldn't bear it..._

"Kylie?" Rose said, her eyes beginning to well with tears, gently shaking the girl.

Kylie's eyes shot open. But any feature--pupil, iris, cornea--was obscured by a featureless violet glow--the same violet as the arc of energy that had struck her moments before.

_Contact made_ a voice said in Rose's head...somehow Kylie's voice, yet...not. 

"K...Kylie?" Rose asked hesitantly, now quite afraid.

Kylie literally floated upright, the eerie purple light dancing and flourescing around her eyes. Without any other word--or any acknowledgement of her great grandmother's existence, she gazed at the window. A great gust of wind blew it outside, and Kylie flew into the New York night's sky, not even sparing a look back.

"KYLIE!!!" Rose screamed.

_The Avatar will be suitable._ the voice that was Kylie's but wasn't Kylie's said to the skies. _Now...my kindred..._

Kylie gestured...the winds howled stronger.

* * *

"Holy crap on toast!!!" Ray shouted. "It spiked, then went down, now it's spiking again!!!"

* * *

There was a crack of lightning in the clear sky, and a burst of white light.

When the burst of white faded, eleven more glowing shapes floated in the skies beside Kylie Griffin. Some, like the manifestation at Stonehenge, in a vaguely human shape. Others perched atop four legs. One, glowing orange, almost looked to be two humans joined at the hip. They glowed in different colors, none the same; with the purple of the creature that was using Kylie's body, a complete wheel of color was present.

_Brothers and sisters, in the name of the Lord of All, I have summoned thee. As we must, we must judge the inhabitants of this world. The Imperative is now in effect..._

_WE OBEY THE IMPERATIVE!!!_ all twelve voices called in unison.

_Go..._ Kylie said, just the glimmer of a smirk forming at the edge of her mouth. _Select your Avatars, that we may fulfill the Imperative..._

The eleven lights shimmered for a fraction of a second, then vanished into a different direction, leaving only the fading echo of their glow behind...

* * *

To Be Continued

* * *

Acknowledgements: Irena Cortez, Shannon Phillips, Phineus Eventide, and Astorath are from the Now Comics run  
"Garou" is a term from While Wolf's _Werewolf: The Apocalypse_ game  
Ben King is a character in the Ghostbusters UK stories; thanks to Kingpin1055 for allowing his use in this story  
Rose Lockyer developed and named by EGB Fan

* * *

#3280-11904m  
025 


	2. Chapter 2

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Part Two**

By Fritz Baugh  
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

_Quick writer note: Yeah, there's a character with my pen name in this story, but I promise you: he doesn't do anything. Much like the cameos by Ben King, it's for the benefit of readers of GBI fan fiction._

* * *

_Previously_  
Something is about to happen...  
The most powerful of wizards and creatures blessed--or cursed--by the supernatural feel it...  
At Stonehenge, an apparition appears, and posesses a young girl in New York city  
Eleven more appear  
The Imperative is beginning...

* * *

**Location Unknown**

* * *

The dimensional shunt opened, and the man called Josiah Nodus stepped into a room filled with high technology and a cold, ominous mood. Several displays were beeping for his attention. 

His blue eyes took in all of the readings in an instant, and they confirmed his suspicions.

"The Imperative is in motion..." he said aloud.

_All scans of psychokinetic matrix fluxuations confirm that conclusion_

"Time since first manifestation?"

_Five minutes, twenty nine seconds_

"And the manifestation was at Stonehenge, correct?"

_Affirmative_

The man simply nodded, and allowed a brief smirk of satisfaction.

* * *

**London**

* * *

Elizabeth Hawthorne, the woman who called herself "Lady Enlightenment" awoke with a start.

It wasn't the dream...a pleasant one involving a horsedrawn carriage ride with a man she'd met recently, a man posessing auburn hair and the most soulful eyes she'd ever seen...it was the sudden, white-hot blast of power that had intruded into dream.

"Lilly? That the heck is going on?" she heard Barney Lupin's muffled voice.

_Contact Made..._ came another voice, pure telepathy...speaking in Lilly Peacecraft's voice--but some how not hers.

She inhaled almost instinctively...even without drawing on her knowledge of _ars Vim_, the sudden surge of quintessence in the area was noticeable.

Only taking the time to wrap her sheet around her nude body, she ran to the source of the surge of power.

Barney Lupin was standing outside Lilly Peacecraft's room, having assumed the powerful _crinos_ form, mid way between man and wolf. "I couldn't sleep, and then I heard her shout...now she won't answer me..."

"Something is happening, Bernard--rip the door off..." Liz said simply

But before he could do it, the door flew open on it's own.

"Lilly!!!" Barney shouted.

Floating about a foot off the ground was Lilly Peacecraft, in her pink pajamas, her blonde hair unkept but swirling as though by the winds. When she opened her eyes to face them, the pupils, iris, and corneas were blurred and obscured, only a solid pink glow showing.

"That's not Lilly..." Liz said.

Lilly smiled an enigmantic smile, and floated out of the room toward them. _Your insight serves you well...I can sense you are a spellsinger yourself..._

"Whoever you are, let our friend go!!!" Barney snarled

_And one of the Changing Breeds...this world has definitely grown more interesting over the last Age...I am afraid that I cannot do as you ask--your friend has been Chosen...to serve the Imperative..._

" 'Imperative'?" Liz repeated, trying to recall whether the Hornbook or Lady Persuasion had mentioned anything about an 'Imperative"...

The thing wearing Lilly's body smiled an enigmatic smile.

_So it has been ordained, so it will be..._

Liz took one step--before she was slammed back into the wall by a guyser of glowing pink liquid. Barney was similarly knocked back.

Immersed, she almost blacked out...the sheer power of the...feeling...the feeling that she should just stay there, drowning...because all would be lost. You cannot stand to the power of the Imperative.

With herculean effort, she brought herself standing, weaving every Empathic Fortitude spell she could recall...the fuzz cleared out of her head, and she looked around...

Lilly Peacecraft had disappeared. Barney Lupin lay writing in what had to be a similar ordeal to Lady Enlightenment's own--if he had any awareness of his surroundings it didn't show.

_Considering that I'm naked and covered in this pink slime, perhaps that's a blessing_ Liz allowed before retrieving the soaked sheet and re-wrapping it around her body.

_It's ectoplasm...charged with intense emotional energy..._ she realized, leaning over to examine the puddle of it on the floor. _I wonder how it would compare to the 1988 reports of 'mood slime'..._

She saw that Barney was beginning to recover his senses also. "Liz..wha happen? Lilly..."

"Gone, Bernard." Liz shook her head. "The ectoplasm was strongly charged with emotional energy, and it incapacitated us long enough for her to escape."

Barney muttered under his breath as Liz walked briskly back to her room to dress. _Something of major import is going on..._

And as she closed the door, she allowed herself one other thought. _In more ways than one...I wish Ray and his friends were here now..._

* * *

**Ghostbusters Central**

* * *

"I'm telling you, Peter, the PK level has dropped back to normal--maybe even slightly below. So I don't know if it's a malfunction or not--but weird stuff often happens around solstice time..." Ray said, not sure if he was trying to convince or unconvince himself.

Venkman rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands in frustration.

Winston came up the stairs, looking at his two fellow Ghostbusters. "That call was from a lady named Rose Lockney--says her twelve year-old great granddaughter just flew out the window, eyes glowing purple."

"Think we should check it out, Peter?" Ray asked.

"Maybe I'm getting spooked with that call from Irena, but yeah...maybe we better."

"I think we should call Egon." Winston said firmly.

"Normally I'd protest, but under the circumstances..." Venkman agreed, nodding and dialing Egon's cel number.

* * *

"..."

"..."

"...egon...did you hear something..."

"...no..."

"...me either..."

"..."

"..."

* * *

Venkman's eyes narrowed. "No answer..."

"Let's get the call..." Ray said. "We'll try again in the car..."

* * *

**Lafayette, Indiana**

* * *

He scanned the empty lunch room one more time, and then was both relieved and terrified to discover that _she_ was there. Ann Fishburne. She gave a small grin and gestured for him to come on over to the table.

The rotund young man, all of twenty years old, with large glasses and a curly mess of brown hair, gave her a nervous smile and sat down. "I was hoping you woudn't mind me bothering you..."

She looked back into her _Star Trek_ novel. "You know you're welcome to eat with me any time."

Ann may not have fit anyone's definition of "Great Beauty", with her small frame and her own set of large eyeglasses, but he'd know her since the eighth grade and had fallen for her pretty hard before the end of ninth. They'd ended up in different classes in High School and had drifted apart, but then discovered they were in the same college, and had seen each other off and on after that.

"Finally going to go home this week?" she asked him playfully.

"I think so...I've been there long enough to get vacation time, so I'm taking next week off. They're mad, but as long as I'm back by the Fourth..."

Ann giggled. "By now you actually miss the family..."

"Well, let's not go that far. I miss my parents...I miss Al...but Cliff has gone overboard into a rap fetish: back at Christmas I'd be trying to sleep and he'd be playing 'I Saw Momma Doin' The Wild Thang With Santa Claus' at high volume."

"Not a 2 Crew fan, I take it?" she giggled, pushing one of her black locks out of her eyes.

"Ann, it was when their stupid so-called album hit #1 that I decided to stop paying attention to popular music." he said indignantly.

"Only twenty and already becoming old."

"Cliff's almost a teenager now, after all, so he thinks he knows everything..." he gestured, knocking his Pepsi over.

"Ah! Grife!!!" he shouted in frustration as it poured all over him.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Fine...fine..listen, let me go get some paper towels and wipe this mess up...wait right here..." he said as he waddled off.

She did as he asked. If he'd had a third eye on the back of his head, the affectionate look she had would've sent his heart soaring.

Then she was hit with an emerald light that dropped her to the floor.

She opened her eyes, now glowing green. _Contact made_

She looked to and fro, seeing no one to impede her. With a gesture, there was a gust of wind that threw open the door. She floated into the sky, and quickly began to fly to the East.

Her would-be suitor waddled back into the lunch room. "Ann?" he called, noticing that her book was laying on the table, and her purse still flung over the chair.

Twenty year-old physics student Fritz V. Baugh picked the book up, and looked toward the open door. "Where did she run off to in such a hurry?"

* * *

**Stonehenge**

* * *

Phineus Eventide, Prince of Warlocks, and Archmage Zandrik materialized in a flash of light.

"I see no sign yet..." Eventide remarked. "That gives us time...such as it is."

Zandrik nodded.

Eventide closed his eyes and steepled his fingers, calling on the powers of magick he'd studied for over three hundred years.

* * *

Ray slammed the mobile phone down. "Still no answer..."

"They went to Janine's parents for dinner..." Winston noted. "Maybe try them..."

"Aren't we here?" Venkman asked with mock innocence as the car pulled up the address Rose Lockyer had given them. "Call after we get out..."

Ray looked at Venkman, suspecting that Peter had some ulterior suspicion _They have been getting closer lately...what if Peter's right?_ And thought of Louis again, feeling for the little man. _I know what it's like to feel left out of this game..._

Ray shook those thoughts out of his head as the three Ghostbusters left the ECTO-1 and donned their proton packs (Ray once more thinking of Louis--wishing he'd been along on this call just as he was with them earlier in the evening, during the Letterman taping). Unlike Winston and Venkman, he pulled on long black work gloves and strapped an ecto-visor to his head. He also pulled out a spare PKE meter.

They went to the indicated apartment, and were greeted even before they could knock on the door. A lady who looked to be at least seventy was standing there, her hands shaking. "I heard the elevator and hoped it was you..." she said, her voice soaked with emotion.

"Rose Lockyer?" Ray asked simply. She nodded.

She moved over to the phone. "Steven...I have to go...the Ghostbusters are here...no, stop saying that...I...no...no it's not your fault, I keep telling you that..."

She nodded a couple of times. "The Ghostbusters will get Kylie back, Steven...they have to. I have to go...I'll call you when I know something..." and she hit the button on the phone to break the connection.

She could barely put the phone back on the cradle her hands were trembling so badly. "My grandson...Kylie's father...he's quite upset..."

Venkman took Rose's hands with a tenderness that would've surprised people that didn't know him as well as Winston and Ray did. "That's understandable, Mrs. Lockyer. Please...just tell us what happened..."

Rose, looking the whole time on the verge of tears, told them how her great granddaughter, twelve year-old Kylie Griffin, was suddenly struck by a purple energy arc, and began to say strange things--without moving her mouth.

"Telepathy..." Ray mused.

"What did she say after that, Mrs. Lockyer?"

"Contact made...something about 'the Avatar is suitable'...and 'now to find my kindred'..."

"I don't like the sound of that...'Kindred' means there may be more than one..." Winston said.

"I've heard the term used with vampires, but this doesn't sound like anything associated with vampirism..." Ray added.

Venkman rolled his eyes. "You got vampires on the brain, Ray."

Winston moved over to the window. "This definitely looks like it was busted from the inside...and this is a solid window, too."

"They don't live in the best neighborhood, after all..." Venkman nodded.

"Your granddaughter isn't the Hulk, is she?" Venkman asked Rose. Rose shook her head. "Ray, how hot is this place?" Venkman said, turning to Ray

"Huh? Oh..." Ray said sheepishly, pulling the PKE meter out of one of his pockets. "I'm so used to Egon doing this..."

Ray flipped on the PKE meter.

And was promptly met with some very angry pops, hisses, and smoke. Ray switched it off as quick as she could.

"That's bad." Venkman deadpanned. "Between Romania and this, you guys are breaking those things way too quick."

Ray wanted to say more, but fear of alarming Rose kept his mouth shut.

Venkman went over to Rose. "Mrs. Lockyer, we'll need any information you can provide on your great granddaughter. Maybe a picture or two."

"Will...will you be able to find her?"

"I think so--we have some special stuff back at headquarters that should help us." Venkman lied sweetly. "We'll call you as soon as we know something."

The three Ghostbusters went out to the ECTO-1. "Peter, do you know how much PK energy must have been in that room to cause that kind of reaction out of the meter?" Ray said, wiping sweat off his forhead.

"Don't tell me, let me guess--the scientific term would be 'assload', wouldn't it?"

"At least a valence of ten, maybe more..."

"I'm calling the Melnitzs..." Winston said firmly, dialing the phone.

* * *

**Canarsie**

* * *

Fritz Melnitz grumbled as the phone rang. "Nisey? Dee? Somebody get that!!!"

Doris Irwin grabbed the phone. "Sure, Pop, why strain yourself." she teased him affectionately "Melnitz, whaddya want?" she answered cheerfully.

_"Doris? This is Winston Zeddemore...are Egon and Janine still there?"_

Doris started to wrap the phone cord around her finger, adopting a mischeivous look. "Nope. They left about two hours ago. You mean she hasn't dropped him off at the firehouse yet?" she said asked facetiously

_"Not as of when we left a little while ago..."_

"If I had to hazard a guess, Mister Zeddemore..." she smirked, knowing the mood her sister and her male companion left the Melnitz house in "You might try her apartment."

Winston said something she couldn't quite make out.

_Contact made_ she heard in her head. In Victor's voice.

Something ice cold covered the back of her neck. "Victor?" she said, fighting a sudden sense of panic.

"Victor? Baby what's wrong?!?" she heard her mother's voice, with all of the fear and panic she found herself suddenly grappling with.

She dropped the phone and ran.

* * *

"Doris? Doris???" Winston shouted into the phone.

"What's wrong?" Ray asked.

Winston shut up and just listened.

* * *

Doris ran into the Melnitz kitchen and the sight froze her blood completely.

Her son, Victor Irwin, was floating about two feet off the floor. The tray of chocolate chip cookies his grandmother had just had him take out of the oven lay on the floor, its contents scattered.

His eyes shone with an obscuring light, angry and red in color. _The Lord of the Dynamic Fire has come, mortals...tremble in fear!!!_ they heard, though Victor's mouth did not open as it twisted into a smug smirk.

"VICTOR!!!" Doris screamed.

_Interesting...I sense something in this place..._

Doris moved forward to grab him, shake him, scream at whatever had done this to her son, but she never got the chance--there was a flare of energy, red--the same red as his glowing eyes--and resembling flames, that pushed her back.

Her parents, Fritz now in the kitchen with his wife, grabbed her.

Victor gestured, and the window in the kitchen exploded outward in a blast of red sparks. He nodded and flew into the night's sky, a fiery trail of red following in his wake.

* * *

"I heard a lot of shouting of Victor's name...but nothing else..." Winston explained, continuing to hold the phone.

"Maybe he shaved the cat again." Venkman offered helpfully.

"You didn't hear the panic in Doris's voice, Peter." Winston returned. "It sounded like..."

The gruff voice of Fritz Melnitz came onto the phone, his thick Brooklyn accent loud with growing fear. _"Please tell me you're onea' Janine's Ghostbuster friends...my grandson Victor, he's been like posessed or something!!!"_

"Winston Zeddemore, Mister Melnitz, and yeah...tell me what happened."

Melnitz told him, as best he could.

"Aw man...listen, we'll be right there, Sir...we'll call Egon and Janine on the way...hang in there..." Winston hung up the phone.

"Winston, what's going on?!" Ray asked.

"I'll give you the low down on the way to Canarsie--and we need to call Janine's apartment double time!!!"

* * *

_Confirming avatar manifestation...Brooklyn, New York_

Nodus nodded. "Victor Irwin. Janine Melnitz's nephew." he had stripped the last of his outer clothing, his expensive Italian suit, off. Down to his boxer shorts, he pulled on a solid black body suit.

He pulled on the mask, black with a red visor.

The vest and coat were of a look some would describe as "techno-Edwardian" Once more, all black save some dark purple highlights

And then the gauntlets. Packed into them was a significant amount of firepower, more than sufficient for most tasks: he could even bust ghosts with them, ironically enough.

He stood before the monitors, and began to download the data showing into the band on his left arm.

"Has the London manifestation reached Stonehenge yet?"

_Negative. But this will occur within moments_

"Excellent."

* * *

"This is more difficult than I believed it would be..." Eventide grunted. "I'd harnessed the power of Stonehenge before...the last time almost two years ago..."

"The Spirit of Halloween making his periodic return, yes..." Zandrik nodded, also deep in concentration. "I was with some Akashics in Tibet at the time..."

"We have to do this, Fallagar..." Eventide grunted, a bead of sweat gently falling from his brow. "No matter how difficult..."

"That time the properties of this place aided you..." Fallagar nodded. "This time, it's what we're fighting against...the raging tide of quintessence, which this place uses for it's other purpose..."

"Especially since the Solstice approaches...it must be what they're awaiting for the final Judgement..."

"Yes..."

_What...is this???_

Fallagar's eyes shot open. "Oh hell..."

Approaching the complex was a girl, maybe thirteen years old, with long blonde hair flowing in the winds, wearing pink pajamas. A pinkish glow came from her eyes.

_Mortals..._ she said in a girl's voice, but without speaking. _This place has been chosen as the site of the ritual of judgement...flee it now, and await your fate..._

There was a crack of lightning, and the girl was thrown back.

"Keep the ritual going, Eventide!" Fallagar snarled, pulling his staff out of the ground with his left hand, his right one still surrounded by sparkles of dancing electricity

"You cannot..."

"One of us has to..."

_YOU DARE?!_ the voice roared, and the girl pulled herself from the ground. _I am the Lady of the Primordial Waters!!! One of the Twelve chosen to carry out the will of Xodiac!!! You dare to raise your mortal hands to me?_

With that, there was a burst of pink light around her. When it subsided, her garments had changed--she was now wearing a simple shirt and pants colored a similar pink as the glow from her eyes. A pair of gloves, boots, a belt, and a cape were all in matching white--a golden broach clasped the cape, and on it was an engraved glyph looking vaguely like the capitol letter "H"

With that, the girl that had been Lilly Peacecraft gestured, and summoned a guyser of glowing pink ectoplasm.

The man called Fallagar held his hands in front of him, throwing up a countermagick that deflected the fluid as though a glass wall had appeared.

The girl physically snarled (though the intimidation value was significantly blunted by her cute features and squeaky voice) _I see you have some knowledge of the spellcrafting, mortal...quite unexpected..._

She gestured again, a second guyser appearing. He extended his right hand, the gem on his middle finger glowing violet, the second guyser dispersing as had the first.

But Fallagar was visibly straining, sweat beginning to pour down his face as well.

_I embody the powers of the Principle of the Fish, mortal...the Primordial Waters are at my command...the waters of instinct and emotion, the primal essence of life itself..._

Another guyser of slime appeared.

_Drown in them, arrogant fool!!!_

"Fallagar!!!" Eventide shouted, bringing his own power to bear against the creature. _The spell is disrupted..._ he reproached himself. But if Fallagar falls, I will not have the power to stop this myself... 

_You would also fight the coming that is ordained?_

"I know the lore of your kind, creature. The human race has moved beyond your power to judge--it must find it's own way." With that, he gestured. _The same dimension shunt I used on Whately and Whitworth...she may not be expecting..._

_That is for us to judge..._ she replied.

"ARS REGO MANIUM!!!" Eventide shouted, a sudden field of black light surrounding the girl. The fabric of space-time began to pull and distort, the girl's body beginning to blurr and shift.

_You seek to banish me? I am in awe of your arrogance..._

Eventide grunted as he pushed all of his considerable will into the effort. _Focus, Phineus...focus...the fate of the whole world could be..._

But that was when Phineus Eventide's world exploded in a painful blast of violet electricity.

* * *

Irena Cortez could feel it palpably now. Something was in the air.

She had been raised apart from her parent's people...the werewolf tribes of the Southwest...but even at her young age some of the lore of the Garou had reached her ears, and as more time went by...as she became comfortable with what she was again, more and more of it sprung into her conscious memory...

_"The Changing Breeds are Gaia's soldiers, Young one...our link to it is strong. When it is joyous, you will be joyous. When it is in pain, you will be in pain. And when it is afraid...you will know it's fear..."_

And right now...she knew the Earth was definitely afraid.

Shannon stood near the door...his young features soaked with sweat. He was slipping into something that she had to call delirium...

"Shannon, I'm going to call Peter again...he said he'd call back, but you look about ready to pass out..."

Shannon just looked up at her. "..it's coming for me, irena...i can sense it..."

Irena, most of all, had to fight the panicky sensation that he was right...even without any idea whether there was any "it"...but why "it" would be coming for him, why he could sense it--that was something she had an obvious and unnerving guess about.

Her supernaturally-enhanced senses detected the smell of ozone. She looked to the East, and an orange glow crossed her field of view for a split second.

And then, standing by Shannon Phillips, was a glowing orange shape, looking vaguely like two human-sized figures joined, literally, at the hip.

"Nooooo!!!" he screamed, and began to run.

_So this is to be the avatar of the Primordial Wind? Fascinating...finding a truer case in duality would be difficult..._ a voice came into Irena's head.

"You just stay away from him!!!" she snarled. Like Barney Lupin, she was a werewolf. She assumed her crinos form, and jumped the creature(s?), fangs bared...

Passing straight through it.

_We don't have time for play, mortal. The Imperative beckons..._

There was a flash of orange light, and the glowing shape was gone. "Shannon!!" she howled.

Shannon ran, blind panic having completely overtaken him. He wished his mother was there...Peter...the other Ghostbusters...anybody...even if Nathaniel Blaque and Astorath, the beings he hated most in all of the world, had appeared and offered to help him in return for an eternity of servitude to them, he probably would've accepted it.

And then it all vanished into a haze of orange light...

Irena ran out of the house...and the sight before her froze her blood.

Shannon had changed completely. The strange garment, an orange bodysuit with white cape, gloves, belt, and boots--the cape clasped with a round broach bearing an glyph resembling the Roman numeral 2--was the least of it. His body had changed. His skin now yellowish and smoothed, his hair disappeared, a set of horns projecting from his forehead.

He looked like he had the first time she'd ever seen him, when he was under the thrall of Astorath.

His eyes sprung open, now featureless and glowing the same orange light as the creature that posessed him.

_Such...power..._ a voice now sounding much like Shannon's said without moving his mouth. _A daemonseed...possibly the most powerful avatar we have ever had..._

"Bastard!!! You can't do this!!!' Irena howled, feeling the bloodlust beginning to swell.

The posessed Shannon just glanced at her. And an arc of orange electricity threw her back ten feet into a tree.

_Curious...I sense a strange resonance in this one...and one not having to do with it's daemonseed...perhaps the mark of..._

If there was any more, Irena Cortez could not hear it, the weight of the injuries dealt her overtaxing even her supernatural endurance...

* * *

"Phineus!!!" the man called Zandrik Fallagar shouted, as an arc of violet electricity cut down the Prince of Warlocks just as he was beginning to win the battle of wills with his opponent.

He looked to the West to see another girl, like the first maybe twelve or thirteen in age, but this one with pale skin and long black hair. She was dressed now in a garment identical to the first, albeit one purple in color instead of pink--and matching the glow in her eyes. The glyph on her broach was different also--a design that might be described as "a couple of wavy lines"...

Her name was Kylie Griffin, though Fallagar could not be aware of that fact.

_Mortals standing against us? Aware of us even before the Gathering is complete? Will wonders never cease..._

_It does strike me as a curious age, indeed..._ Lilly's thoughts said, shaking off the effects of Eventide's spell.

"Elwen..." Fallagar called, as he brought himself to standing. The slime had been charged with emotional energy...trying, as she'd said, to drown him in both a physical and metaphysical sense. Thoughts of love he thought he'd moved past...the pains of so many battles..._Elwen give me strength..._

The pink clad one turned to Eventide, blasting him with the same sort of psychomagnetheric slime that she'd used against Fallagar (and, earlier, Liz and Barney). Stunned from the lightning burst, he didn't have time to throw up a countermagick sheild, and took it full.

_Do you have the faintest idea with what you deal with?_ the creature posessing Kylie Griffin asked Fallagar as the archmage painfully pulled himself to his feet.

"Do you?" Fallagar retorted, as a tempest of wind began to blow about. He twirled his crooked staff, and a gust hurled Kylie back, smacking her into one of Stonehenge's monolithic stones. She bounced off of it with a curious electical sparking effect.

"I know well what your kind wants, and what my companion told yours is what I also believe: No. More. Judgements!!!" and he gestured, summoning several bolts of lightning from the sky. They struck the posessed Kylie...

And she deflected them back at him.

_You..._ her thoughts came. _I sense it now...you are one of the Children...and not just one of them, the one who shares my sigil: the Lord of the Steady Wind born to mortal flesh..._

"All...the more reason to stop you..." he said, defiant through the pain of his growing injury.

_All the more shame to fall before me_ she retorted, hitting him with another blast.

_Fallagar..._ came Eventide's voice in his head. _Flee...while you can..._

"I can't leave..."

_You must...we have failed..._

"Then Earth is..."

_Find the Five Who Are One..._ was Eventide's last communication, before Zandrik Fallagar's world disappeared into a swirl of light...

* * *

To Be Continued

* * *

Phineus Eventide, Shannon Phillips, and Irena Cortez from the Now comics run. Created by James Van Hise.  
Inquisitors characters created by Jim Harley  
Thanks to EGB Fan for character development of Kylie Griffin and Rose Lockyer  
Some mystic and werewolf concepts gleefully swiped from White Wolf Games  
Zandrik Fallagar created by and © Fritz Baugh

* * *

#32101-30404r  
027 


	3. Chapter 3

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Part Three**

By Fritz Baugh  
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

_Previously_  
Something is about to happen...  
The Imperative is beginning...  
The youngest Inquistor and the Son of Astorath  
A girl known to one who's destiny lies over a decade hence  
And blood to one who is already a powerful force  
All and others have been taken  
The Prince of Warlocks and the Archmage of Wind move to prevent it...   
But they fail.

* * *

**Upstate New York **

* * *

_An ill wind is blowing..._

The long haired young man looked up from the book he was reading, and took off his glasses. A few months shy of his seventeenth birthday, the young man had a stack of books next to his reading desk that would make many a college student cry for mercy. Books about--and books _in_ Latin. Occult references. Religious texts. Certainly not the shallow pap favored by his peers (if they bothered to read at all instead of having _Street Fighter II_ tournaments...)

"Vincent?" came a knock at the door.

The young man looked up. "Yes, Chastity?"

"Mom wants you to know that dinner's about ready..."

Vincent looked at his watch, and opened the door. His younger sister, some ten years old, was standing there. "I'd lost track of time...I didn't realize it was getting so late..."

"Well, Dad had to work late again, and Mom decided to fix dinner late. You know how she can be...so what are you reading, anyway?"

"You would probably find it dreadfully boring."

"Try me."

"It's an essay about a Medieval crafter of mystick artifacts. He was called Himinis the Mad and he liked to put nasty curses on his items as 'jokes'..."

"You're right...that is boring." she replied, with an exaggerated yawn. "I'll tell Mom you'll be right down."

Vincent smirked as she left. "Princess" was the nickname he and some of his brothers had for their sister, the youngest of their large clan. Perhaps it was all but inevitable, being the last child after seven boys, she was a little spoiled by her parents. And her brothers.

He closed the book...

And his vision vanished into a sea of glowing aquatic blue.

_Contact made..._ a voice said inside his mind...apparently in his own voice.

He opened his eyes with great effort...there, swimming in a sea of blue energy, was a shape...vaguely like some sort of insect...a scorpion?...glowing the same blue, with a glyph resembling a stylized letter "M" showing on it's head.

"What...what are you?!"

_You...resist my control? This is unexpected..._

"I don't know what kind of ungodly creature you are...but I demand you release me!!!"

_You are in a position to demand nothing, Mortal._ the creature snorted, and began to roil and change...when it was finished, Vincent was looking at a copy of himself, minus the glasses, wearing a costume consisting of a pants and tunic in the same aquatic blue, set off by white gloves, boots, and a cape, and a broach with the same "M" glyph.

"An astrological design..." Vincent realized. "The glyph of Scorpio..."

_Your insight serves you well, Mortal._ the copy replied. _But if you really understood the meaning of that sigil, you would not even think of resisting me..._

Vincent had begun to understand that he wasn't in the physical world anymore...what he was seeing was a metaphorical landscape in his own mind. A mind which had been invaded by this Scorpio creature.

"In the name of God...get out of my mind!!!" Vincent howled, throwing himself at the creature. The doppleganger staggered, and that seemed to scare and enrage it.

_I...I don't believe this!!! No chosen avatar has ever resisted my power before!!! this in intolerable!!!_

"Then simply leave...it will solve both of our problems."

_Mortal fool!!! I am the Lord of the Steady Waters, Chosen by Zodiac to pass Judgement on your pathetic world!!! I WILL NOT BE DENIED BY A MORTAL!!!_ the creature howled in reply, and the world around Vincent vanished into a blue haze...

"As you would have it, monster take my form..." Vincent snarled defiantly as his consciousness began to fade. "but I take solace in the fact that my SOUL is NOT yours to take!!!"

In the outside world, Vincent's body stopped shaking. "Incredible power in this one..." Vincent's voice...but not Vincent...noted. "It will serve the Imperative well..." With that, the young man gestured, and was clad in the same blue and white outfit as the doppleganger on the mindscape had been.

Outside the house, Dr. Benjamin Angus Belmont, Professor of Anthropology, was pulling into the driveway when he saw the blue flash in one of the bedrooms.

He got out of the car quickly, an instinct telling him something was very very wrong.

His youngest son appeared, dressed in a strange outfit. "Vincent?!"

_Your offspring has been chosen to serve the Imperative..._ With that, he flew into the sky, heading East, not looking back. Within seconds, Vincent Abraham Belmont had vanished from his father's eyesight completely

* * *

**Apartment of Janine Melnitz   
Brooklyn, New York **

* * *

She drank in the warmth of the moment...the sense of peace...contentment of a sort she couldn't remember feeling before..._ever_...

She listened to the steady beat of his heart, and it was beautiful. Against her cheek was his only lightly haired chest...even his smell, tinged with sweat from the exertions of the last few hours, was beautiful...

She wanted to take that moment...that whole night...trap it in a bottle...and treasure it forever.

Was it because it had been so long? She would be lying if she'd claimed to be virginal when she met him eight years ago...but since then, she'd only been intimate with one other man. It had been two and a half years before, and it had been profoundly disappointing on just about every level.

No. It wasn't any of that. It was that this was _right_ in a way no other relationship she'd ever had was.

She opened one eye and looked up at him. His normally stern face was in an uncommon expression of calm. She'd seen him sleep before--but even then, it carried an expression of trying to wrest the secrets of knowledge from the universe even from Morpheus's realm. Instead, he looked like Atlas, relieved of the weight of the world.

She closed her eyes again, and nuzzled back up against him. _I wish I could just stay like this forever..._

She had just about drifted off to blissful sleep when some jackass began pounding on her front door.

Janine Melnitz awoke with a start, her eyes flashing with anger. Beside her, Egon Spengler stirred, still a little dumbstruck by the events of the last few hours.

"I feel sorry for whoever that is..." he managed to say.

"If it's that creep down the hall wanting to borrow my blender again, I swear I'll rip his lungs out right where he stands!!!" she snarled, throwing on a bathrobe, and storming to the door with that distinctive "walk" of female anger.

She shouted at the door. "Who the hell is it?!"

A tiny voice, a tenor she know well, came back from the other side..."Um...it's me, Ray...Um..."

She muttered another curse or two and undid the six locks that held her door in place. Sure enough, Ray Stantz stood there, face beet red.

"Um...listen...we know, um, Egon's here and...well..."

"Is it that important?" she spat out. Ray gulped hard. Like Peter and Winston, he'd been secretly hoping that things were going to finally...happen for their two old friend, and the bitter irony that so much was happening just when it _was_ was not lost on him.

Egon appeared, part the blanket of her bed wrapped around his waist. "I will assume this is of utmost importance, Raymond." Neither missed the rather intense tone in his voice as he said this. Ray gulped again--Egon was genuinely fighting off anger.

"Believe me Egon, none of us wanted to spoil this for you...but it _is_ that important. For one thing, it involves Janine's nephew Victor..."

Egon and Janine both looked at each other.

* * *

About fifteen minutes later, Egon appeared, wearing his trademark Ghostbuster flight suit, blue with pinkish trim and the name "SPENGLER" sewn into name tag over the left chest pocket. "..well, it's really because Peter was convinced I would be the one Janine would be least likely to murder for interrupting..." Ray was saying to him.

Egon shot up one eyebrow as he straightened his glasses. "Valid reaction."

Janine appeared, also dressed in a flight suit. It was the same blue as Egon's, though the cuffs and collar were orange. The nametag read "MELNITZ". "Don't say a damn thing. If this involves my nephew I am going. If Dr. Venkman doesn't like it, I'll tell him exactly where he can go and what he can do with himself when he gets there!!!"

Ray gulped for a third time, and grinned nervously. "Welcome aboard..."

* * *

When Ray, Egon, and Janine got to the ECTO-1, Winston was standing outside. Venkman was still in the car, and they could see him on the phone, gesturing frantically.

"Winston?" Ray asked.

"We got a call on Ghostbusters Mobile just a minute ago--it was Irena Cortez."

Venkman got out of the car, his expression grave. Janine had a lump in her throat herself--Venkman had bonded with Shannon somewhat, in a way she'd only seen surpassed by the clear love he had for Oscar Wallance. His voice was unusually flat when he finally spoke. "That was Irena. Something just posessed Shannon, and it sounds awful similar to what happened to the Griffin girl and Victor..."

"You had better tell us the full story on the way to the Melnitzes..." Egon said gravely.

* * *

**London **

* * *

The doors outside the safe house came open, allowing a red and blue clad woman with long dark hair and her large dog--a very wolf-like dog with a dark coat and a green plaid collar--to leave.

"The flow of _vis_...I can practically smell it..." the woman said.

The dog growled something that wouldv'e surprised a casual listener for sounding very much like the English word "Yeah..."

Lady Enlightenment didn't need any spellcrafting to find the direction she was looking for--there was a deepening glow in the sky that made it more than obvious where the trouble was coming from

"Stonehenge..." she gasped. "Of course...one of the most powerful nexi on the planet...and with the solstice coming it has to be positively boiling with tass..." Behind her, the dog began to growl. "Bernard? What's..."

_...Sodalis..._

Before she could react any further, there was a swirl of light and something appeared, some ten feet above the ground. Gravity took over as the swirl vanished, and the man hit the ground with a loud, meaty thud. A stick resembling a shepherd's crook clattered and rolled away.

Behind her, Barney began to shift...he became larger, but still doglike. "Be careful, Lizzie..." he said, heavily buried in growls.

Liz went over to the man--he was covered in a pink-colored psychokinetic ooze that she'd already encountered that evening: when their friend Lilly Peacecraft had been posessed.

"...ars...intellego...mentem...ars...intellego...mentem..." she heard him muttering over and over. There was a flash of light, and the layer of concealing slime vanished.

_A magus?_

He was dressed in a purple coat, vaguely Edwardian in cut, with an otherwise semicasual wardrobe with a tie and khaki pants. But it was the device on his left chest that suddenly drew her attention...

"Lizzie..." Barney noted, assuming full _crinos_ form. Interestingly enough, when he did his tacky green and yellow pants appeared "Ain't that a lot like that symbol on your broach?" It was indeed a very similar glyph resembling a backwards letter P.

"It's a Hermetic mark...I was passed it by my _mater_...but according to her no male had been inducted into that lineage since the Middle Ages..."

"I guess...all I know is I don't like some of the angles he's lying in...and if he's got Lilly's mood slime all over him then he might know something about what happened to her."

Liz grimaced. The man's left arm was probably broken in at least two places, true enough. And Barney was right--if he knew something about Lilly, they had to do something. On the other hand, this brazen man appeared to be breaking several tenets of the Peripheral Code, and that was something that she just couldn't help but be annoyed about...

The man emitted a burbling howl, and sat bolt upright. With a loud scream, accompanied by a round of cracking noises that churned their stomaches, he flexed the shattered arm, again and again. his face dripping with sweat, an angry howl accompanying every flex. After several horrific minutes, he flexed the arm once more. No sound came from it this time, the movement appearing completely normal. With a grunt, he collapsed back to the ground.

"Wow..." Barney noted.

* * *

"So...in summation, at eight PM Eastern Daylight Time, there was a spike in the PKE levels recorded at the lab..." Egon Spengler was saying. "Shortly after this, the first call came in, from a Rose Lockyer about her great granddaughter being posessed. Calls came in in short order describing similar events occuring to both Victor Irwin and Shannon Phillips..."

"If I had idea one who this Griffin girl was, I'd wonder if it was someone out to get people who knew us." Ray nodded.

"Any ideas yet?" Janine asked Egon,

"Only that the timing cannot be coincidence--right on the cusp of the summer solstice, one of the most psychokinetically active times of the year." Egon answered. "At the solstices, the equinoxes, and a few other times of the year (such as October 31) the flow of PKE at the ley line nexi increases geometrically for a brief amount of time."

Ray nodded. "And whatever is going on is intended to draw on that."

"That still doesn't explain what it wanted with my nephew!!!" Janine noted.

"No." Egon shook his head, "It doesn't..."

The ECTO-1 had already stopped at the Melnitzes, and given Egon and Janine an opportunity to do their best to calm her frantic parents and sister. Egon had actually gotten his best set of readings about a block away--when they got closer, the PKE meter began to overload as it had Ray at the Lockyer's a few hours before.

"I gotta call Irena when we make it back to the Firehouse..." Venkman said. "She's gotta be going nuts...I just wish I had something to tell her..."

"Yeah, but if you don't call she's likely to run all the way down to Manhattan to find you." Winston deadpanned. "You especially don't want that when Dana's coming to town soon..."

Venkman couldn't help but chuckle...then he looked up and realized there was a man standing right in the middle of the road.

"WINSTON!!!" he shouted.

"OH SHIT!!!" Winston shouted, having seen the man at the same time Venkman had. He jammed ECTO-1's brakes, leaving a long trail of rubber behind the vehicle. But it wasn't going to be enough...the large car wouldn't be able to stop in time...

The man held up his left arm.

The ECTO-1 came to an instantaneous, dead stop only inches from him.

Venkman leaned out the window, with the man apparently safe it was okay to be pissed off at him. "Hey, Asshole!!! What the f are you doing?! Don't you know there are laws against jaywalking?! Or did you not see the tons of lights and sirens we were blaring away?!"

"Peter..." Ray gulped. The man was dressed all in black, a long coat with some dark purple hightlights. His face was covered by a mask sporting a featureless red visor.

"And we're the Ghostbusters--if you think your little Halloween costume scares me, well, I've seen scarier costumes on first graders!!!" Venkman continued.

Something was making the hair on the back of Egon's neck stand straight up. He pulled out his PKE meter. "What in the?"

"I'm afraid I don't have time to continue this discussion, Doctor Venkman. More pressing matters call for your attentions." The voice was deep and resonant...and Janine had the nagging feeling she'd heard it before.

_Nodus?_

The black-garbed man jammed a button on his left gauntlet. In a blink of an eye, the ECTO-1 had disappeared from the world.

* * *

"He's stirring..." Barney noted, stepping closer. "You wants I should put him in a headlock?"

"Not yet..." Liz said firmly.

"I say..." the man muttered, in a clipped accent that sounded vaguely English. "That's an experience I wouldn't like to partake of again for a while..."

"I bet..." Barney couldn't help himself. "I was about expecting you to turn into Tom Baker or something..."

The man pulled himself upright, and with a gesture and a brief gust of wind the shepherd's crook he'd been carrying returned to his grasp.

"A Garou? Fascinating..." The man said studying Barney. "And I must say those pants are quite cool..."

Barney grinned and fluffed his pockets. "I get that a lot" he admitted, with a toothy grin that would terrify 90 of the human populace.

"Magus!!!" Liz said, clearly having enough of all this chumminess. She gestured, and several bands of energy appeared around the man. "I am Lady Enlightenment, filia of Lady Persuasion, Follower of Guernicus, Quaesitor Maga of the Order of Hermes. You appear here in the middle of this brewing unpleasantness, which is suspicious enough, but you wear the Hermetic mark of a line of succession which has been exclusively female since the Thirteenth Century"

The man seemed more amused that threatened. "Lady Melwen Fallagar, Filia of Zandrik, Follower of Jerbiton..."

Liz seemed a little taken back. "You...know of this?"

"Of course. Allow me to introduce myself, Lady Enlightenment." Just the faintest smirk came to his mouth. "I am Zandrik Fallagar, Filius of Delphia, Follower of Jerbiton , Archmage of the Order of Hermes...I bear the same Hermetic mark...because I gave it to your mater's ancestor."

Liz's eyes went wide. "You're the one who disrupted the Tribunal of 1983, claiming to be the great Archmage--despite the fact that he would be over eight hundred years old, and not even the best longevity potions known to the Order could make an eight hundred year old archmage look twenty five!!! Impersonating a Hermetic Archmage carries some stiff sanctions, Magus, including gilgul..."

"And what was the judgement of the Quesitor at that Tribunal?" Fallagar asked calmly.

Liz stepped back.

" 'While we cannot confirm the identity of Archmage Fallagar, bani Ex Miscellanea, nor can we deny the possibility that he is, indeed, who he claims to be.' They go on to say that Master Porthos seemed convinced...and the decision was signed by the Prima of House Quaesitor herself."

Fallagar gestured, and the energy bands surrounding him disappeared without seeming to take much effort from the man. "Now then, Milady...we can stay here and debate Hermetic law further, or perhaps we can do something about the fact that Earth is about to possibly see all of human civilization destroyed..." With that, he gestured toward the growing glow in the sky.

"What do you know of this?" Liz asked, still extremely suspicious, but sensing the truth in the man's words. "You were covered in the same psychomagnetheric ectoplasm our friend used against us..."

"Blonde girl, about age thirteen? Born in late February or March?"

"Um...yeah..." Barney replied. "How'd you know? She was born March 3..."

"It's why she was chosen by that avatar..." Fallagar replied. "Pisces, sign of the Primordial Waters...A second had shown up while Eventide and I were attempting to lock down Stonehenge--Aquarius of the Steady Winds. There will be..."

Fallagar's explaination was cut off as a glowing shape began to appear in the street. A long, sleek automobile with an assortment of electronic gear on it's roof...

* * *

"Riding the Tilt-A-Whirl again..." Venkman groused, as he realized the world was beginning to reappear around him. "Egon, these little trips are beginning to really suck..."

"Peter, don't take this the wrong way, but bite me."

"Man, she's influencing you already..."

"Where...where are we?" Ray was the first one to ask, looking outside the car. "It looks like somewhere on Earth--a city or something, but ...huh?!"

He caught sight of three beings standing on the street only a dozen yards away from them. One was a youngish man in a purple coat he didn't recognize. But the others he did--he recognized the crinos form of Barney Lupin, but most of all he recognized "Liz!!!" he said, opening the door of the ECTO-1 and getting out.

"Ray! Wait, man, it could be..." Winston started to say.

"Liz...what's going on here?" Ray asked her. "Where are we? Did you bring us here?"

"Of course not, Ray..." she replied, concerned yet somehow unable to avoid a sense of relief at seeing him and his comrades. "I don't know if I know any more about this than you do..."

"These are two of the 'Inquisitors' we encountered in Romania..." Egon was explaining to Janine as they got out of the car. "Liz Hawthorne is a mage calling herself 'Lady Enlightenment', while her companion is Bernard Lupin--a werewolf."

Janine had to giggle and roll her eyes. "It still amazes me how you can say things like 'and he's a werewolf' so casually..."

"Hey, Pete..." Barney whistled. "Why didn't this firecracker turn up at our last meeting? Hey Red...like my cool pants?"

Janine rolled her eyes. "They are cool. But don't try anything, Poodle Boy--I find excessive body hair a turn-off..."

"Ouch" Barney chuckled.

Egon cleared his throat conspicuously loudly. "Janine Melnitz, our Secretary. She's not a field agent--she's here for personal reasons."

The man in the purple coat was studying the new arrivals, a strange look in his eye, rubbing his chin. _Which could be most fortuitous...if Phineus's words are true..._

"So where's Father Portenza and Lilly? And who's that weirdo?" Venkman asked, indicating the man in the purple coat.

"Padre's still in Rome dealin' with the fallout from our Romanian adventure. Lilly...um...well..." Barney's voice trailed off.

"Call me Fallagar, Doctor Venkman. I have heard much of you from a mutual aquaintance of ours, Phineus Eventide, Prince of Warlocks..."

"Eventide?" Liz reacted. "You mentioned him earlier...is he involved with this also?"

"Yes..." Fallagar replied. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I propose we compare notes...I would hazard some of the reasons the world famous Ghostbusters are out this not-so-fine night dovetail into what has been occuring to the rest of us..."

* * *

A short distance away, Nodus monitored events through his suit. _I must be cautious...a wrong move could jeaprodize everything...I will get my opportunity. I must be patient._

* * *

"Your account of Lillian's posession matches the stories of Victor, Shannon, and Miss Griffin." Egon summarized "Which means there is at least four posessed people out there..."

"The final number is twelve, Doctor Spengler." Fallagar said simply.

"You sound quite sure of that, Mister Fallagar."

"I am." Fallagar paused. "You see...what is going on is in accordance to a plan, mandated by a powerful supernatural force, utilizing a system of symbolism I'm sure every one of you is familiar with to some degree. Lady Enlightenment recieved extensive study through her Hermetic apprenticeship...I'm positive Doctor Stantz, as educated as he is in the occult, is probably also quite knowledgeable. Even Dr. Spengler is versed in some of it's symbolism to be sure..."

"Man, howabout you stop talking in hot air circles and tell us what you're talking about?" Winston interrupted with exasperation.

"Astrology, Mister Zeddemore." Fallagar answered simply.

" 'Astrology'?" Venkman repeated incredulously. " 'What's my sign?' and all that stuff? Earth is under attack by a horoscope? That's nuts--mine didn't say anything about destroying the world today--all it said is 'you might have a chance encounter with an interesting animal'..."

"Sounds accurate to me" Barney deadpanned.

"I don't think I have to tell the Ghostbusters of all people that many mythologies contain the rudiments of truth. A fellow named Gozer was the most obscure of Sumerian myths until about eight years ago, for example..."

Venkman had to admit. "Touche'."

"Linked to astrology is an honest astronomical principle--the recession of the equinox. Every year, due to the wobble of Earth's orbit, the apparent point where the Sun crosses the celestial equator at that start of spring moves ever so slightly backward. When the Greco-Roman astrologers recodified the principles, the point was in the constellation Aries. In around 4BC, it crossed over into the previous sign, Pisces. And after some two thousand years, it has now retrograded back to the sign Aquarius..."

" 'The Age of Aquarius'..." Janine nodded. "Like the song back in the Sixties..."

Fallagar nodded back. "Yes. But what is unknown to the world at large is this: at the beginning of each Age, twelve beings appear, each linked to one of the signs of the Zodiac. They posess human bodies and congregate at a powerful point of mystic interest, and..."

"And what?" Ray asked.

"Pass Judgement on humanity's continued fitness to rule the planet, or whether it might be time to destroy civilization and start all over again."

"Man, that is NUTS!!!" Winston sputtered. "I'm with Pete--I refuse to accept that we're about to be killed by a horoscope!!!" He went up to Fallagar, angry on several levels. He often was when another "pagan" idea was rearing it's head. "Just where did you get this nonsense, anyway? You said they appeared in 4BC--I don't think there was anything in the Bible or Roman history about that..."

"4BC?" Ray mused, a thought or two rolling in his head.

"There wasn't a manifestation." Fallagar replied, a new, impatient tone beginning to rise in his voice. "A circle of Mercuric wizards, acting on the warning of the leading scholar of Atlantean history of the time, identified the access point and used a powerful ritual to temporarily drain it of it's _vis_...PKE as you call it. Unable to manifest, the avatars stayed in their home realm. Until now."

"So what's different this time?" Janine asked.

"Phineus and I attempted the same strategy...we located the avatar manifestation point at Stonehenge and teleported there as soon as we were certain. We set about trying to stem the flow of energy...drain it below a critical threshold that would stop supporting the manifestation and cause it to dissipate." Fallagar paused, his face not changing expression. "But due to the properties of Stonehenge, we failed."

Egon's eyebrow shot up. "What do you mean by that?"

"Stonehenge isn't just a nexus point...it's a geomantic construct, actually designed--according to some stories--to trap spiritual energy and even evil spirits. By trying to stop the flow, Phineus and I were not only trying to go against the nature of the energy flow, we were trying to go against the powers of Stonehenge itself. We weren't enough."

"Where is Eventide now?" Ray asked.

"The last I saw of him, he cast a teleportation spell to send me out of there for help..." Fallagar answered. "As far as I know, he's still there at the avatars' mercies."

"Oh man..." Winston said as he opened the door to the ECTO-1. "Then maybe it's time we stopped jawing and got moving."

"Agreed." Egon nodded. "Miss Hawthorne, Mister Lupin, you are more than welcome to join us."

"Accepted." Liz replied. "I could get myself there magically, but this way I can save the energy for the battle..."

The seven piled into the car, helped slightly by Barney assuming his full wolf form (a very small, dog-like one by wolf standards). Venkman smirked with satisfaction from the passenger seat when Ray and Liz got wedged together, provoking a blush on the occultist's face.

"You coming?" Winston asked Fallagar.

"My ring contains a spell of flight that will not draw my own vis reserves..." he replied. "I will join you shortly."

Winston shrugged--still convinced the man was a weirdo and probably insane--and gunned the ECTO's engine. "Just remember--in England, you drive on the wrong side of the street..." Venkman was already nagging him.

Fallagar waited a full minute. "I assume it is you who brought them here?" he said, not apparently looking at anything.

Nodus stepped out of the shadows. "That I did, Lord Archmage. Simply call me Nodus."

"The enigma...very droll..."

"I would think you would be happier. I brought the Five Who Are One right to you..."

Fallagar looked at him at last. "You seemed quite versed in some rather obscure lore, Mister Nodus."

"Hard won, I assure you." Nodus crossed his arms. "I know of much more that you did not tell them...Lord Aquarius."

For possibly the first time that day, the wizard's eyes flashed with genuine anger. "You talk of things you have very little business speaking of, Mister Nodus, and of no relevance to the crisis at hand."

"Oh really? Perhaps not...but if they _are_ the Five Who Are One, destined to play the crucial role in the Judgement...they are also the Five Who Are One destined to play just as crucial a role in the Ascension..."

"Today will prove the former. Only then will I concern myself with the latter." Fallagar replied firmly. "I begin to sense more than one secret you hide yourself, Mister...Nodus. It might be in our best interests to mutually keep what we've discussed here to ourselves..."

There was a gust of wind that knocked Nodus forcefully to a nearby wall. "Otherwise..." Fallagar growled "...an enraged Archmage is not a sight that one takes pleasure in. Or endures for very long."

There was a long unconfortable silence.

"Very well, Archmage. I speak of nothing of the Children to them..."

Fallagar nodded. "That will do for now..." With that, he extended his right arm, and with a flash from the purple stone adorning his ring, he took to the skies.

Nodus smirked under his mask. _Very interesting indeed...after eight hundred years, you can still be human...enjoy your "victory" Archmage. We'll see who has the last laugh..._

* * *

Phineus fought to keep what consciousness he could...he could feel them all around him, their spells draining his own quintessence...and nothing he could think of, no spell granted him by three centuries of communion with Mother Gaia, was helping him..._They are the chosen of the ancient gods...and against that, my power is nothing...nothing...Zandrik, my friend...do not fail to find them..._

They stood in a circle, at the center of Stonehenge.

Victor Irwin, clad in red. "Aries...of the Dynamic Fire..."

Next to him, an Arabian boy clad in orangish-red. "Taurus...of the Steady Earth."

Shannon Phillips, clad in orange, his head bald and demonic horns showing. "Gemini...of the Primordial Wind..."

A black woman in orangish yellow..."Cancer...of the Dynamic Water."

Another woman, dressed in yellow, her expression severe. "Leo...of the Steady Fire."

A little girl, about age ten, with chestnut hair, dressed in greenish-yellow. "Virgo...of the Steady Earth."

Anne Fishburne, college student, dressed in green. "Libra...of the Dynamic Wind."

Vincent Belmont, dressed in aquatic blue. Unlike the rest, an occassional bead of sweat seemed to fall from his brow. "Scorpio...of the Steady Waters."

A well-tanned man with blond hair, dressed in deep blue. "Saggitarrius...of the Primordial Fire."

An old Caucasian man, with only a few wispy white hairs, clad in midnight blue. "Capricorn...of the Dynamic Earth."

Kylie Griffin, clad in purple. "Aquarius...of the Steady Wind."

Lilly Peacecraft, clad in pink. "Pisces...of the Primordial Water."

Next to her, completing the circle, was Victor Irwin.

_The Circle is Complete... _

_All is in readiness _

_The Imperative will be fullfilled. _

_Judgement will be pronounced!!!_

* * *

To Be Continued

* * *

Phineus Eventide, Shannon Phillips, and Irena Cortez from the Now comics run. Created by James Van Hise.   
Inquisitors characters created by Jim Harley  
Thanks to EGB Fan for character development of Kylie Griffin and Rose Lockyer   
Special thanks to Vincent Belmont for his advice and allowing me to use him in the story  
Some mystic and werewolf concepts gleefully swiped from Atlas and White Wolf Games  
Zandrik Fallagar created by and © Fritz Baugh

* * *

#32137-71704y  
032 


	4. Chapter 4

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Part Four**

By Fritz Baugh  
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

_Previously_  
Something is about to happen...  
The Twelve stand complete  
The avatars of all the principles of Zodiac  
Stand assembled  
The Prince of Warlocks is their prisoner  
But the Archmage of the Winds is drawing night  
With him, a Filia of Guernicus and a Wolf of Gaia   
And those who might be the fabled Five Who Are One...

* * *

**ECTO-1, En Route From London To Stonehenge **

* * *

"...It's only a couple of hours until sunrise--my assumption would be that whatever they are going to do, they will do then." Egon Spengler was musing. "One of the main flares of energy on the Solstice occurs at sunrise..."

_That is my belief also..._ Zandrik Fallagar, who was flying along nearby, responded telepathically.

"That doesn't give us a hell of a lot of time..." Peter Venkman said, looking at his watch.

"I'm going as fast as I can on this road and trying to not attract police attention." Winston Zeddemore retorted. "We didn't exactly enter this country legally, and I don't know about you buy _my_ passport is back at home..."

"That ain't gonna matter if we're all dead..." Venkman grumbled.

At the back of the car, Liz Hawthorne--the woman also known as Lady Enlightenment--couldn't supress a slight chuckle. Ray Stantz, sitting right next to her, couldn't help but notice. "They're like that all the time..." he shrugged, with a sheepish grin.

"I figured..." Liz answered. Barney Lupin, in his wolf form (though because of his particular werewolf tribe, he more resembled a German Shepherd than a wolf) was sleeping right next to them, and snoring loudly. "I could tell they were close. I was just thinking they sounded a lot like me and my sister..."

"You have a sister?" Ray asked, genuinely curious.

"An older sister, back in Nova Scotia...she hasn't left our hometown in her life, is settled down with a husband and an adorable little boy..." Liz looked away, with a bit of a wistful smile. "While I wander the world hunting vampires, hopefully preventing astrological disasters, and whatever else the Order wants done. Oversee Tribunals, investigate this Covenant's activities, rule on this dispute..."

"Sounds even more hectic than my life..." Ray nodded.

"I don't know...there are days where I think if I stayed in one place too long I might go insane...but then there are other days..." She looked back at him. "Where I wonder what I'm missing..."

Ray nodded. "I wonder so often to...you know, I have a brother and a sister I never talk to because, well, they hate me. Nieces and nephews that I probably couldn't pick out of a police line-up. I guess it's just as well I don't have a 'normal' life either...I'm too afraid I'd screw it up..."

Liz moved closer. "That, Ray Stantz, I think is something else we have in common..."

Ray looked at her...so very close...he felt his temperature rising...the urge to move even closer...close the distance to those so sensuous lips...and strangest of all, he had the unfamiliar feeling...that she wouldn't stop him...

Which was just when the ECTO-1 went over a particularly nasty bump, sending the snoozing werewolf hurtling into Ray's lap. When Barney woke up and started to shake his head woozily, the spell was thoroughly broken.

Egon studied his PKE meter. "Hm..." he muttered. "It's like he's mocking me..."

Janine Melnitz looked at him with concern. "Mocking? Who?"

"Nodus..." Egon answered, referring to the mysterious man who'd been popping up in their cases a lot recently. "This PKE reading from him is baffling...and a work of genius."

"What does it say about him?"

"Nothing, that's just the thing. He basically kept me from getting any information about him by somehow creating a feedback loop, sending my own biosignature right back at me. How he did it, I would very much like to know..."

"Wow...I mean, I assume that would be difficult to do..."

"Quite. It would take a considerable familiarity with both our technology and paranormal applications of quantum theory. I could do it, Raymond could do it...but until now I simply assumed nobody else could be that familiar with my design."

Janine's brow furrowed. "That lying bastard...he swore up and down he didn't have anything to do with Grossjuck's dirty pool..."

"Yes. It would lead me to believe that Nodus is still in posession of copies of the blueprints of Ghostbuster technology. And has been studying them rigorously." And Egon did not like that idea in the least.

"One more thing to worry about..." Janine said with anger, settling deeper into her seat. She took off her glasses and rubbed her weary eyes. She wasn't sure which she wanted to do more--scream or cry. The world about to end. Her perfect evening interrupted. More crap with Nodus. Victor...

"Janine..."

"Yeah, Egon?"

"If it's at all possible, we will save Victor and the others." he said firmly.

It gave her a moment of warmth to realize he was getting to read her thoughts this clearly. "I know you will, Egon..." she smiled, and nuzzled up against him. Something close to a smile crossed his lips, and he shut his meter off.

* * *

Ben King yawned deeply as he drove toward home. _I wonder if I should just park and go to sleep..._ he wondered to himself. _It might be safer than plowing along barely more of my wits than a drunk..._

Of course stopping meant it'd be later when he got home. When he got his precious cargo home. It would be later when he developed the film and began trying to figure out just _what_ had happened at Stonehenge at the stroke of midnight.

He came out of the forest he'd been travelling in the last few miles...and clear of the trees, he saw a sight in his rearview mirror that made him come to a complete stop.

He jumped out of his truck and gazed dumbfounded at the sight. The sky was glowing--_Back in the direction I just came!!! It's coming from Stonehenge!!!_

_I wonder...did I escape certain doom? Or am I missing the chance of a lifetime?_

* * *

"So have we like got a plan or anything yet, Brainiac?" Venkman said as he turned to face Egon in the back seat.

"There are a number of scenarios I'm entertaining." Spengler responded. "I'm hoping that Master Fallagar's greater familiarity with the situation will prove useful."

"Oh, yeah...he did such a good job before..." Venkman rolled his eyes.

"I really really hate admitting this, but I agree with Pete." Winston broke in. "There's something about that weirdo I have trouble trusting...like what if he really is eight hundred years old? That just ain't natural, man..."

Egon coughed firmly. "For one, his own belief in the matter is that if we can disrupt the unity of the avatars, the whole event will be likewise disrupted."

"One goes out, they all go out? Like cheap Christmas lights?" Venkman asked. Winston rolled his eyes in the driver seat.

Egon nodded. "One possibility is to utilize our personal connections with some of the avatars to break the possession. Janine or myself with Victor. Mister Lupin and Miss Hawthorne with Miss Peacecraft. Janine or yourself with Shannon."

"But Victor's Mom and grandparents were present when he was posessed..." Ray pointed out. "It doesn't get a much stronger connection than that..."

"And Bernard and myself were there when Lilly was..." Liz pointed out. "However, we were taken by surprise, and didn't know what we were dealing with. And I would presume neither Victor's mother nor grandparents have dealt with posession before."

"Quite correct" Egon nodded. "We however, have. I would assume Miss Hawthorne has access to numerous exorcism spells, and I know Ray knows a rite or two."

"Maybe Shannon should be our first target, then." Venkman suggested, his expression now serious. "His...unique heritage might mean he's better able to fight off the posession

* * *

_Not much longer now..._ he heard a smug voice say.

Phineus realized, to belabor the obvious, that he wasn't dead...something to be thankful for, to be certain. But just as quickly, he realized that he wasn't able to move...

He managed to open his eyes, and saw that he was still at Stonehenge. The skies were dark, but the faintest ember of light could be seen in the East, were one to look hard enough. Far brighter was the light being generated by the twelve being surrounding him, all in matching outfits with capes and boots, each a different color, sporting a brooch with one of the ancient glyphs of the Zodiac emblazoned on it.

_The spellsinger awakens..._ one of the twelve--the one wearing the glyph of Taurus--noticed.

_Perhaps he is wondering why he still lives..._ the young boy wearing the glyph of Aries snorted. _I wonder that myself..._

The girl of about the same age, the dark haired girl wearing the sign of Aquarius, walked over to Eventide. _This one is a receptacle of much power, my brother..._ she explained. _It will serve useful at the moment of sunrise, and the final act of the Imperative._

"I will not help you..." Phineus managed to bite out.

_You will have no choice..._ the intense-looking, long-haired teen bearing the glyph of Scorpio retorted. Phineus narrowed his eyes. _Is that a bead of sweat upon his brow?_

He then noticed another of the assembled avatars..._That one bears the marks of a daemonseed...could that be the son of Astorath? Or is it another?_

He turned back to Scorpio. _I sense it...a powerful Gift in this one, trying to break through the posession...if Fallagar is successful in bringing the Five here, that may provide our opening..._

"I am not the only one to oppose your Imperative." Eventide said firmly. "Even now one of the Children of Zodiac rallies the others. They will come here, and they will defeat you."

_They will have to arrive very soon, then..._ the girl with the Virgo glyph mocked. 

_Gaia's breath, Fallagar..._ Eventide thought to himself with a note of exasperation that he wish he didn't. _Where are you?!_

"So this is Stonehenge, huh?" a loud voice said with a distinct American accent. "Looks like we beat the rush!!!"

"It is like four AM here..." a female voice commented in a thick Brooklyn accent.

The assembled avatars turned incredulously to the source of the noise. A brown-haired man in a set of brown coveralls, brandishing several large cameras, strode into the ancient complex like he owned the place. Behind him, a red-haired woman in a matching blue outfit pushed a cart full of bundles in shopping bags.

_Humans!!! This is the time of the Judgement!!! You are not welcome here!!!_ Lord Saggitarius thundered. _Leave immediately!!!_

The woman nonchalantly blew a bubble. "Look...dose must be somea' them Druid fella's I heard about..."

The man wasn't nearly so sedate. "Well, for a buncha religious guys they sure have crappy manners! Listen, Friar Tuck, I'm an American, I paid for this trip, so I'm gonna be here and enjoy myself!!! I'm just gonna watch and take pictures anyway--go back to sacrificing your goat or whatever, okay?" With that, the man pulled one of his cameras to his face, and a huge flash drove Lord Saggitarius back.

Phineus watched the whole scene incredulously. _What are they planning?_

"Hey, lookit' that guy..." the woman said, pointing at the demon-horned creature that was Shannon Phillips a few hours before. "Don't that guy look familiar?"

The man with the camera turned and clicked the shutter again, staggering Lord Gemini with a flash. "Hey, hell yeah! You look just like that costume a friend of mine wore last Halloween!!! So you go to the same place? I think he got it at Ron's Party Supplies..."

_Human, I neither know nor care what you're talking about..._

"You even sound like him too. Maybe you know him? Shannon Phillips?"

_You try my patience..._

"Aw, c'mon, that is you isn't it? You can't fool your Uncle Peter..."

_Uncle Peter?_

"Peter Venkman? You know---dated your guardian for a while? Irena Cortez? Remember her?"

"I bet he does, doesn't he..." the woman added, the accent now less exaggerated. "Remember me too, Shannon?" Janine asked him; she spared a look at Lord Aries, her posessed nephew Victor..._Stick to the plan..._ she had to tell herself, all too easily visualizing the state of panic her sister and parents must be in. "We helped you when that Mister Blaque creep came after you?"

* * *

Egon's face was solemn as he listened through his walkie-talkie. Ray studied the scene through the magnifying lens of his ecto-visor. "I don't know about this...it doesn't look like Shannon's even flinched..." Ray remarked. "Though strangely enough the guy with the Scorpio glyph looks like he ate some bad sushi..."

_"We went through hell in a pretty literal sense to get you back, remember?"_ Venkman's voice continued. _"You gotta remember, Buddy..."_

Beside Egon, Winston had pulled on his black work gloves (only Ray wore them with any frequency) and was clutching his neutrona wand anxiously...just wanting to _do something_. Barney Lupin was next to him, having adopted his powerful _crinos_ form, the half-way point between _homid_ (human) and _lupus_ (wolf)

Liz stood on the other side of Ray, Fallagar next to her. She was feeling the flow of pure psychokinetic energy--_vis_ or _quintessence_ as the Order of Hermes referred to it--so powerful it was threatening to everwhelm her senses, even with her training in the art of blocking out the signals. (Egon hadn't even tried to turn on his PKE meter--he'd dryly joked "I'm half expecting it to overload even turned off.") In over two decades of dealing with magic, through her apprenticeship and her own travels as a full-fledged _maga_, this was simply the hugest paranormal event she'd ever experienced.

"I see Eventide." Ray said. "Looks like he's still alive, but in some sort of force bubble or something..."

"A relief" Fallagar replied. "I was certain they were going to kill him...perhaps he's powerful enough they judge him to be of use to them..."

"Use?" Barney asked. He didn't like the tone in the eccentric wizard's voice--he didn't trust magicians as a rule (Liz and Lilly being the notable exceptions, of course), and something about this one made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"Eventide's mystic descent is from the same Druidic orders that built this complex ...it gave him the insights we needed to even attempt to close down this complex. They might similarly hope to tap that knowledge. Or..."

"I don't like that 'or'..." Winston grimaced.

"Or they will sacrifice him at sunrise, adding the considerable power of his deathforce release to the flare of natural nodal energy."

"A living creature's PK doubles at the moment of death." Egon explained out of habit. "With Eventide's considerable cultivated energy field that could be.."

" 'Bad' I know, gotcha." Winston finished for him, adjusting his grip on his thrower for the fifth time.

* * *

_I grow weary of this..._ the Aquarius avatar announced. _Humans, leave this area now--or face the consequence._

"Hey, I'm a tourist! Aren't you supposed to lie to me and kiss my butt?" Venkman retorted, a little bit of desperation growing. _Shannon hasn't even flinched..._

Janine looked quickly back in the direction they'd come "I think the spore is about to hit the fan..."

* * *

Egon abruptly shut off his walkie-talkie and drew his thrower. _"The spore is about to hit the fan"_ was the agreed upon phrase. "Time to go..." he said with grim resolve.

"I never liked the horoscope anyway." Barney quipped. "No dogs."

* * *

"You can't threaten me--I'm an American!!! Hurt me and George Bush will bomb your ass!!!"

The blue light from Saggitarrius's eyes glowed brighter.

"GET DOWN!!!" Janine shouted, pulling a thrower out of the cart.

Venkman dropped, and a proton beam drove back the avatar.

"Your Chamber of Commerce is definitely hearing about this!" Venkman offered as one last sarcastic remark, scrambling toward the cart and the second proton pack hidden within it.

* * *

**Interlude--Ghostbusters Central **

* * *

Louis Tully felt equal parts relief and trepidation as he quietly unlocked the door to the firehouse. Relief, as his unscheduled stop clearly hadn't awakened any of the building's normal occupants--and trepidation, because the ECTO-1's absence meant that the Ghostbusters must be out on another call.

"I hope it wasn't nothing the three of them couldn't handle..." he mused quietly out loud, noting the assumption that Doctor Spengler hadn't returned yet. _Don't think about that Louis...just like trying not to think about Dana with Andre or Peter...out of mind, out of mind..._ he chided himself. _Just get what you came after and get out..._

Sure enough, sitting next on the small desk at the side of the garage were his house keys. "I can't believe I forgot those..." he muttered out loud, scooping them up.

Slimer hurled down the stairs, making a beeline straight for him. "Oh hey Slimer sorry to distract you from your first or second late night snack but I forgot my keys and...Whomph!!!" This as the dripping green entity slammed into him hard, babbling something quickly and fearfully.

""Wha...huh...something about a monster Slimer? Now that's silly because this is where the Ghostbusters live and what monster's gonna be stupid enough to..."

His voice trailed off when he caught a glimpse of a dark shape near the staircase. "oh shit..."

He tried to creep toward the storage lockers, to maybe grab a proton pack and do something...

Before he tripped over his own feet and hit the floor, hard.

In seconds, it was standing over him. Six feet tall, covered in brown fur, with the head of a wolf. "Where are the Ghostbusters?!" it rumbled in a deep and impatient voice.

Louis peed himself and passed out.

* * *

Nodus watched everything. He knew the moment was approaching. All the players were in place. All he needed was one opportunity. He would soon get what he needed to answer the questions he needed answered--and then noone would be able to stop him. The Gemini Child. Control of the Ascension. All would be his.

* * *

"_Ars...Muto...Auram!!!_

Fallagar knew he didn't really "need" to speak the words aloud anymore...he had surpassed that need when casting simple elemental spells quite a long time ago. But there was over twelve hundred years of Hermetic tradition to be upheld--and sometimes he felt...he _knew_...that keeping enough of an eye on the past to remain human was all that kept him from falling over the precipice of sanity.

A howling gale engulfed Stonehenge...a rumble of thunder was heard in the clear skies...as one phenomenal will worked to reshape the very tapestry of reality in that area.

"Stick with the plan!!!" Egon Spengler shouted as he and the other two remaining Ghostbusters ran to the complex, neutrona wands ablaze. They did not aim to hit any of the avatars--yet--because though posessed, they were still flesh and blood humans. Egon and Ray couldn't be sure if that meant it would damage them significantly or not at all, and didn't have the time to study the situation enough to find out.

The pale girl wearing the purple outfit and the glyph of Aquarius shouted telepathically. _The Childe of the Steady Winds seeks to challenge us again?_

"You have your Imperative--I have mine!!!" Fallagar retorted. The howling grew to a crescendo, and the air grew pregnant with ozone.

"Janine!!! Peter!!! Move!!!" Winston shouted.

"Awooo!!!!" Barney Lupin (or, to use his self-proclaimed "werewolf name": "Nightclaw") charged the circle of avatars from the other side. Quick as lightning, he grabbed Lilly Peacecraft--the avatar bearing the glyph of Pisces--and sported her outside the stone complex before she knew what was happening.

_"Blitzkrieg!!!"_ Fallagar shouted, invoking the language of the land of his birth.

The sky exploded with electricity, a thunderstorm of ground-shaking intensity, concentrated on the circle of beings who sought to remake the world in the name of their "Imperative"

"Now!!!" Egon shouted.

All five Ghostbusters fired as one. Each particle stream struck a different one of the stone monoliths, causing a dance of sparkling light to play around them.

The avatars, stunned by the abruptness and the severity of the attack--and perhaps unused to being interfered with at this stage of their Imperative--milled around in confusion. Until the one bearing the glyph of Leo noticed..._The quintessence!!! They are attempting to consume the quintessence of this place!!!_

Ray couldn't help himself--he spared a second's glance in the direction of Nightclaw and Lady Enlightenment, who were now attempting to reach the posessed mind of their friend, Lilly Peacecraft.

Lady Enlightenment was of the Quaesitoris...the adjudicators and officiators of the Order of Hermes. Mystic disciplines that invoked the sphere of _Mentem_...the Mind...were a specialty of theirs

The duo had not seen any sign of the consciousness of their friend when she had first been posessed, but they were taken by surprise. This time they were ready, and it was the avatar that was at the disadvantage of surprise.

Knowing she didn't have the time for subtlety, Liz Hawthorne knifed her way into the mind of her young friend..._Lilly...please come out, Lilly..._

_This cannot be tolerated!!!_ the avatar of Aries howled angrily. _I am the Lord of the Dynamic Fire, and I will not be denied by a mere mortal!!!_

_Aries!!! Do not..._ Aquarius started to say, as Aries--posessing the body of Janine's nephew Victor Irwin--took to the skies, barelling straight for the floating form of Zandrik Fallagar.

_Zandrik..._

_Eventide?_

_You choose wrongly...the weak link is not the daemonseed...it is..._

_Silence old man!!!_ the angry tone of Lord Scorpio broke in, overwhelming whatever message Phineus Eventide was trying to deliver.

_C'mon, Liz...you can do it..._ Ray thought to himself. He hadn't know her for very long, but had to admit she was quite a fascinating person to know. Intelligent, resourceful..._What am I doing?_ he chided himself angrily. _I haven't known her long enough to be thinking like that!!! Dammit, Stantz, the world is at stake and you're getting wrapped up in..._

He wouldn't even let himself finish that thought.

_Lilly...please...I know you can hear me..._ Liz shouted mentally. Lilly Peacecraft was a natural psychic--a "Psi Sensative" of notable potential. The disciplines Liz had to develop through years of mystic training were as natural as breathing to Lilly...Liz was hoping that the young girl's power would give her a toehold, a means to shake off the posession.

_FOOL!!!_ the angry voice of the entity posessing Lilly--the Pisces force--howled.

With that, Liz Hawthorne's world exploded in pinkish light, before becoming dark...

Ray choked a shout in his throat as Liz suddenly screamed and fell to the ground unconcious.

"Liz?" Barney called, as the avatar of Pisces rose to her feet. She gestured disdainfully, blasting Barney with the same sort of pinkish ectoplasm she'd attacked with when she first manifested.

"Oh hell..." Ray said outloud.

Aries crashed into Fallagar, psychokinetic fire dancing around his body. The strength of Victor Irwin's hands enhanced by supernatural strength as they closed around the older man's throat.

"Victor!!!" Janine couldn't help but cry out.

_Enough of this!!!_ announced the man wearing the glyph of Capricorn. He gestured, and the ground began to shake violently.

The woman in green, Libra of the Dynamic Wind, gestured, and the storm began to quiet and break apart.

The Ghostbusters found themselves unable to stand as the ground pitched and lurched. "I knew I shouldn't have had that extra pizza before we left!" Venkman quipped.

_Definitely not how I expected to spend the rest of the evening_ Janine told herself ruefully. The ecstacies of only a few scant hours before seemed like a million years ago.

Egon tried to steady himself, but failed (as did all of his comrades). But his mind was still racing. _We were hoping between the mystic attack by Fallagar and our attack on the megaliths, we would consume enough of the PKE flow to drive it below whatever critical point these creatures require. I'd say it hasn't worked as well as we'd anticipated. There must be a way..._ he told himself. _There __must_

Ray couldn't be sure how long the Earth protested, as it seemed like an eternity (though he figured objectively it was probably only a few minutes). He scanned quickly to and fro, locating each of his four comrades, Barney, and Liz...all seeemed to be breathing, though understandably stunned from the earthquake.

Lilly Peacecraft was standing with the Zodiac Lords once more.

"Where's the wierdo?" Barney asked, his lupine regenerative powers bringing him to his senses the quickest.

Ray looked again. "Over there!" he pointed.

Zandrik Fallagar looked like he'd been roasted. What was left of his clothing was still smouldering, and he lay very still...

"Make that an ex-wierdo, I guess..." Barney said, not much humor showing in his voice.

Ray turned to the circle, a panicky feeling he was wholly unused to rising in his throat. The twelve creatures had returned to their circular formation.

"Egon?' he heard a female voice say.

"I'm all right, Janine..." was the response.

"I hate to steal your line, old buddy, but I feel like the floor of a taxi cab." Venkman quipped as he painfully pulled himself to his feet.

Egon was looking at the skies as Janine helped Winston up. "Crumbs...it will be dawn in a matter of moments...we're running out of time..."

"What do we do, Big Guy?" Venkman asked, none of his voice's omnipresent sarcasm in place.

"Bottom of the ninth, we got two outs and _nobody_ on base." Winston added.

Egon looked at them. Knowing them as well as they did, they could see the look in his eyes--somber even by his standards. Embracing a truth he didn't want to face--and speak aloud even less.

"We've failed. We couldn't break the posession, we couldn't stem the flow of PKE...and in a matter of moments whatever the circle has in mind will be activated."

Ray gulped.

"You don't mean..." Winston realized, eyes bulging.

Ray nodded ruefully. "The ultimate sanction...right, Egon."

Egon nodded, and gripped his thrower. "An explosive overload of five proton packs should more than disrupt the energy being gathered here. But in the process, Stonehenge and everything in it...everyone in it...will be vaporized."

"It's the only way..." Liz confirmed woozily. "The Zodiac avatars cannot be allowed to fulfill their Imperative..."

"We're blowing ourselves up?" Barney asked incredulously.

"If you have any other ideas, believe me, we're all ears." Venkman snapped

Silence.

"There is no finer fate..." Liz said. "Than to die in the service of humanity."

Egon inhaled. "Open the safety plates."

With that, he and his four comrades flipped open the panel containing the safety switch. Another button awaited them underneath it.

"Execute." He said simply.

With the jabbing of the button, a shrill, angry whine entered the humming tone of cyclotron. The button began to blink a stern red.

Peter Venkman looked at his comrades. "I'd say 'see you on the other side' but I think that's been done..." he quipped. There was an uncomfortalbe round of laughter. And perhaps inevitably, his thoughts drifted..._Dana...Oscar...I'm sorry...I hope someday you'll understand why I won't be there for you..._

Winston Zeddemore said a silent prayer _Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..._ And a final thought of Kaila MacMillan. _I thought for sure I'd get to marry you one day..._

Ray Stantz smiled. _I always knew I'd never die alone...and there's nobody I'd rather check out with than with this bunch._ He became aware that Lady Enlightenment stood next to him. "I just wish I'd had the time to get to know you better..." he found himself blurting out.

She grabbed him and kissed him full on the mouth. "As do I, Raymond..." she answered, eyes sparkling with unspoken promise.

_Aw, man...I hope Mom and Dad like her..._

Egon Spengler took off his glasses. "I'm sorry..."

Janine Melnitz looked back at him. "Sorry for what?"

"I'm sorry I couldn't save Victor...or Shannon...or any of the others. And I'm sorry..." he paused, voice uncommonly close to breaking. "That I dragged you along into this."

"You didn't drag me, I insisted, remember?" she smacked him gently. "Victor wouldn't blame you for this--you tried your best to help him, remember?"

"I love you." Egon responded simply. "More than anything, I'm sorry I didn't admit that to myself a lot sooner."

"What's done is done..." she shook her head. "At least we're here together for the end..."

The tall physicist and short secretary shared one last passionate embrace.

Barney Lupin looked to the lightening sky. "Well, this sucks. I'd just renewed by subscription to _Big Jugs_ magazine and everything..."

The whine of the proton packs began to louden noticably.

* * *

The Twelve continued their ritual. All was in readiness. The Imperative would move forward. All that was needed was the power that would flow with the rising sun...

It was the avatar of Libra that noticed it. _What is this? I feel a swelling of power...power not of mystic making, but of dying atoms?_

_No!!!_ Realization hit Phineus Eventide hard. _Their sacrifice is noble, but it will upset the balance of reality!!! They will fulfill their destiny in the Judgement, but the Ascension will be threatened!!! I must act, even if the cost is all that I have left..._

He knew what he must do. He reached out with the last of his power...

* * *

Only once before had the Ghostbusters opened that fateful panel and jabbed that button. Only once before had they heard the protesting whine of the overloading proton packs.

But fate had intervened that day, allowing them to abort the process before it reached its fiery conclusion.

There would be no such reprieve today.

* * *

"Critical mass attained!!!" Egon shouted.

"Oh shit!!!" Ray shouted.

_I shall know no fear!!!_ Winston finished.

Venkman screamed one last insult at his foes. "EAT THIS, YOU SONS OF BI..."

But the rest of his words were lost, as the cacophony of dying atoms reached its orgasm.

* * *

From his observatory, Nodus allowed himself a smirk.

All was going exactly as forseen.

* * *

To Be Concluded

* * *

Phineus Eventide, Shannon Phillips, and Irena Cortez from the Now comics run. Created by James Van Hise.   
Inquisitors characters created by Jim (OgreBBQ) Harley  
Thanks to EGB Fan for character development of Kylie Griffin and Rose Lockyer  
Special thanks to Vincent Belmont and Ben King for their advice and allowing me to use them in the story  
Some mystic and werewolf concepts gleefully swiped from Atlas and White Wolf Games   
Zandrik Fallagar created by and © Fritz Baugh

* * *

#3326-11505y  
044 


	5. Chapter 5

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Part Five**

By Fritz Baugh  
GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

_Previously_

Something is happening...  
The Twelve stand complete  
The Prince of Warlocks is their Prisoner   
And the last gambit of the Archmage of Winds  
Has failed  
The Five Who Are One  
Sacrificed to their own atomic fire  
But what of the agenda of the Enigmatic One?  
And what of the prophesies of the Ascension?  
Can things not be as they seem?

* * *

**Ghostbusters Central **

* * *

"Oh man, I don't like that smell..." Louis Tully found himself grumbling as he started to wake up. "It means I freaked out again and peed myself again..."

Slimer still hovered close by, babbling something Louis couldn't understand (how Ray claimed to decipher those babblings was totally beyond him) as he realized there was an ice pack on his throbbing head, and he was perched in the chair at Janine's desk.

"I'm afraid that was my fault, Mister...Tully, was it?" a rich female voice broke in to his reverie. The source of it was...well, he had to admit to himself a quite attractive specimen of female homo sapiens: tall, with long brown hair, and some mixed ethnicity--Hispanic?--in her features. He realized she looked familiar...and not just because she couldn't help but remind him vaguely of his old neighbor, Dana Barrett...

"The werewolf!!!" Louis realized with a start, and shot upright. "There was a werewolf or something here!!!"

"Calm down, Mister Tully...the werewolf isn't going to eat you, I can promise."

"You sound awful sure about that...' he said, stumbling over to the storage lockers, intent on grabbing a proton pack.

"I am. I'm the werewolf." she responded simply.

Louis stopped. It hit him all at once. "That's where I've seen you before! You're Irena Cortez, that werewolf that Dr. Venkman...er, you were Dr. Venkman's friend for a while..."

"Where is he?" she asked with a little more gravity in her voice. "Earlier tonight my ward disappeared, apparently posessed. I called and talked to Peter about it, and he said he'd be on it as soon as he could--something similar had happened to another girl and to Janine's nephew. That was six hours ago. Where are they?"

"I don't know...I mean, I wish I did but I just came back to get my keys. But I noticed ECTO-1 is still gone which means either they never came back or they left again."

Louis noticed she was wearing one of Venkman's spare flight suits, and appeared to be barefoot. He gulped hard as what he remembered being told about werewolf transformations made him realize that that flight suit was probably all she was wearing, and had probably grabbed it after she'd accidentally scared him half to death.

"I can try the number for Ghostbusters Mobile, the cel phone in the ECTO-1. It's..."

Several loud alarms interrrupted him.

"That came from upstairs..." Irena said, eyes narrowing.

"Well, then that means that it isn't a problem with the Ecto Containment Unit, which would be bad..."

She grabbed him and yanked him along with her up the stairs. When they reached the computer area on the second floor, several screens were flashing error messages, and the printer was churning out some paperwork.

"PK field inversion...51 N 0 W...what does that mean?" Irena asked.

"Um...well...er..." Louis gulped. "I don't know..."

Irena looked away from the screen...there was a great unease growing stronger now...the same unease that she's attributed to feeling coming from the Earth itself, via her Garou gifts...something almost palpably..._wrong_...in the very air around her.

Slimer started to moan something softly...truth to tell, he realized he suddenly wasn't feeling all that good...

* * *

_The Earth shakes uncontrollably... _

_Volcanoes go out of control... _

_Tsunami born of tidal forces wreck anger upon the world... _

_This is what they want... _

_This is the Imperative..._

Raymond Francis Stantz realized that it was Phineus Eventide's voice...but when he opened his eyes, the man he saw was younger, with a full head of bushy dark hair. Wearing Eventide's cape and outfit, nonetheless.

_They intended to use the power of the Nexus to blanket the Earth with quintessence, destroying most of the works of technology, and then subject it to all manner of natural disaster--earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes. The death toll would be catastrophic--but in their minds, the resulting diminished numbers of humanity would be stronger, more "fit" for survival._

_I'm...not dead? I mean, I never bought into the whole Christian scenario of angels and fluffy white clouds...but I expected a little more than this...at least maybe Mom and Dad waiting for me... _

_Should you survive this day, you will have many still in front of you..._

The field of his vision seemed to clear...there was energy crackling about, and he realized he wasn't alone. There was Peter, and Winston, and Egon and Janine...and Barney Lupin and Liz...

_Eventide? _

_Yes...this is a place of mind, and here I appear as I did in my youth... _

_Fascinating... _

_Now how did I know you were gonna say that, Egon... _

_The time grows short...the power of the avatars has been disrupted by the destruction of your equipment...but in moments they will rally, and will complete the Imperative--even if they must destroy us and the bodies they posess to do it... _

_How...are we still alive?_ Winston was the one to dare to ask.

_I expended a great deal of my remaining power to shift you out of phase just as the devices you bore were exploding...for I knew that though your sacrifice was noble, it would cut short the full destiny intended you... _

_Say what? _

_You are the Five Who are One..._ a new voice broke in. They turned, and there was Zandrik Fallagar, still looking barely alive, leaning on his staff, most of his clothing burnt away. Ray noticed, if noone else did, Liz cast a quick look at Eventide, and her features darken.

_Perhaps you do not believe in Prophesy..._ Fallagar continued _But I sense the truth of it--the words the Forever Swimmer wrote long ago...the Five who would be key to securing the Age of Aquarius...and then the Ascesion... _

_We must act quickly..._ Eventide shook his head. _My power is fading...in moments, the avatars will realize what has happened...and will fulfill their Imperative... _

_So...what do we do now, anyway?_ Ray asked. _I mean, we don't even have our proton packs--what can we do against that that we couldn't before... _

_The power lies within you--the power of the bond between you, and all that you know and have shared. You are never stronger than when you fight as one... _

_Fallagar, Lady Enlightenment...we must grab all of the energy we can before it fades...the energy even within ourselves... _

_But what of yourself, Master Eventide? You've already... _

Eventide cut Liz off abruptly. _That is unimportant, Child... _

Venkman looked uncomfortable. _Give us power? We're not sorcerers... _

_What...what will we do with it?_ Ray seconded

_You will know..._

The five Ghostbusters looked at each other. _Only one way to find out..._ Ray finally said, which was met with four nods of agreement.

* * *

The atomic fire would've engulfed Stonehenge, if not for the efforts of the Zodiac Lords--instead, it burned in a shrinking ball of light. The twelve grimaced from the exertion...

_Damn the Mortals and their interference...the entire Quintessential Nexus of the entire planet has been damaged by this... _

_Indeed...we had drawn so much of it's power here... _

_And so much of it consumed by the primal fires they unleased..._

The girl wearing the glyph of Aquarius grunted as the last of the nuclear light faded.

_NOW!!!_ The voice of Phineus Eventide shouted.

* * *

Nodus materialized back in normal space. Only a few dozen yards away, the Zodiac Lords were surprised by the return of the five Ghostbusters and their three allies.

He flexed his right hand. An electronic whine eerily reminiscent of the arming of a Ghostbuster proton pack began to sound...

Underneath his mask, Nodus smirked.

* * *

_What in the name of the Twelve Houses?!_

"Like we said earlier...NO MORE JUDGEMENTS!!!" Fallagar shouted, tamping the ground with his broken staff.

There was a crackle of energy.

The energy flashed through Eventide, Lady Enlightenment, and even Barney Lupin...

And then the Five Who Are One felt it well...

_Orange is for Courage, Raymond Stantz...the light in your heart that never gives in to fear, even when all looks lost... _

_The gold, Winston Zeddemore, is for Faith. The belief that a grander force guides us, the hope for the future that has seen you through so many horrors... _

_The emerald is for Sincerity. When you triumph over the dishonesty of your birthright, and are honest with others--and more importantly, yourself, Peter Venkman--will your destiny be secured... _

_Violet is your color, Janine Melnitz, and it is the color of Kindness. Yours is a heart willing to do much for others with little immediate reward...but never let darkness take it, and you will attain all you desire... _

_And you, Egon Spengler, are probably expecting me to say the red means "Knowledge" or "Wisdom". You would be wrong. Red is your Passion, your love of knowledge, your love of your brothers in arms, and your love for the one your heart has chosen as it's own. Unlock that Passion, and unlock your true destiny... _

_The power of your souls...use it well..._

In front of each Ghostbuster, a ball of glowing light appeared...Ray studied the one in front of him, shimmering orange...

"Raw psychokinetic energy..." Egon mused, as the energy in front of him glowed red.

"Great. So what now?" Venkman asked. The ball of light in front of him glowed green.

"We have faith..." Winston answered, feeling the glow of the golden light in front of him. "You got a plan, Egon?"

Ray's eyes went wide. "I know what to do...we just do it the way we do best..."

Ray grabbed the orange light...and it swirled and twisted, reshaping...

Until a glowing orange proton pack appeared on his back, glowing orange neutrona wand gripped in his gloved hands.

Janine smirked as she grabbed the purple light in front of her. "I think he's got the idea..."

And in moments, the five stood armed once more.

"I wish to point out one important thing..."

"What's that, Egon?" Venkman asked, rolling his eyes.

"Since these aren't proton beams, don't worry about crossing the streams."

They fired.

The glowing beams, each in the same color as each Ghostbuster's energy, hit their targets.

The Zodiac Lords howled, and moved back.

_What...is this?!_ the Avatar of Leo screamed

"Payback for that crappy Age of Aquarius song, Jerkweed..." Venkman retorted.

"In fact..." Egon said, an uncharacteristic hint of a smile curling his lip. "It might be that combining these beams will intensify their results..."

"Are you sure of that?" Winston asked.

"The theory is sound..."

Janine wordlessly re-aimed her beam, the violet light joining with Egon's crimson one. The Avatar of Saggitarius was thrown back.

"I'd say that works..." Ray deadpanned, joining with Venkman's blast.

"Master Eventide..." Liz said, worry growing in her voice, as the form of the Prince of Warlocks began to lose it's coherence.

_My task is not done yet, my Child..._

Barney, meanwhile, was being leaned on by the exhausted Fallagar. "Dude, earlier tonight you made me want to chunk my dinner with that bone-cracking thing, now you survived being roasted...you like unkillable or what?"

"Not quite..." the smaller man answered. "But having to stretch my vitality twice in one night takes a lot out of me..."

"Just what are these things, anyway? This really gets up my nose..."

Fallagar finally began to answer "In the myths of Atlantis, they were created by Iaoue, the One Above All...and that at the turning of each Age, they would visit the world of Mortals and render judgement upon it--they will not destroy the world, or even all of humanity...but they believe in a very Darwinist principle of the strong surviving..."

_Egon Spengler--the weak link is Lord Scorpio._ Eventide's voice called out, growing ever more ethereal. _I sensed a powerful spirit, energized by the Gift, struggling with the primal creature that posesses his body. You must concentrate your effort there!!!_

Egon's eyes narrowed. "Full stream--the one with the long hair and the aqua blue--Fire!!!"

"Did he say Scorpio? I'm a Scorpio..."

"Shut up and fire, Doctor Venkman"

"Of course, not all Scorpios are as cool as I am..."

The five beams joined as one.

A beam of white light struck the young, long-haired man bearing the glyph of Scorpio...

* * *

Vincent Abraham Belmont realized he was becoming aware again...trapped in his own mind, still, but no longer _oblivious_

A shell of aqua blue glass surrounded him...the shape of a scorpion...

But there...at the edge of the glass...

White light was burning at the shell...

_Noooo!!!!_ the voice that had defeated him earlier screamed.

Vincent threw himself at the bubbling flaw in the glass...

And the prison in his mind shattered into a thousand pieces..

* * *

_NOOOOOOOOO!!!_

_THE IMPERATIVE!!!_

_Mortal curs!!! You will die painfully for this!!!_

_Wait..._

The young man wearing the glyph of Scorpio fell to the ground with a dull thud.

A blue glow appeared, that grew into the form of a scorpion, the glyph glowing white on it's back.

_These mortals..._ the Scorpio being intoned. _Bear examination..._

"Have we won yet?" Venkman asked.

"It may only be half time..." Ray replied, gritting his teeth.

_Join with me my brothers and sisters...there is more than one way to pass Judgement..._

"What's going on?" Barney asked.

"I don't say this very often after eight hundred years, Mister Lupin..." Fallagar replied. "But I don't know..."

Energy crackled around the five Ghostbusters...

_The power they wield...not the power of dying atoms as before, but the power of their own souls magnified...feel them...see them..._

Aquarius...the great granddaughter of Rose Lockyear, the first of the Avatars posessed...stood before them...

_Yes..._

Lady Libra nodded. _Great Courage...Faith...Sincerity...Kindness and Love..._

Lord Aries--the creature posessing Janine's nephew Victor--nodded as well _Our Imperative was given to us by Iaoue the One...Lord of all Creations...before, our Judgement was averted by force of arms, or trickery..._

_But now..._ Scorpio said. _You have dissipated our power at great cost to yourselves--and now, we see the shine of your souls. And they are Worthy._

_We will return at the next turning of the Age_ the man bearing the glyph of Capricorn. _But this day--our Judgement is to allow your kind to develop as they were..._

_You may yet render Judgement on your own kind before the next Age...but you have shown us you are now worthy of that responsibility for the next two thousand years. Pray your descendants are as worthy..._

"We...we win?" Venkman asked, hesitantly.

_If you want to view it as such..._ Lord Gemini answered.

The eleven avatars remaining began to glow...their borrowed bodies slumped to the ground, a form of light appearing next to them, in the forms of their sigils. A bull, a ram, a lion, a goat...two human-like beings apparently joined together...

* * *

Nodus primed the blaster embedded in his gauntlet.

_Now..._

* * *

_As we depart this plane, all will be returned to the place they belong..._

The twelve began to glow more brightly...

Suddenly, a blast rang out...a blast sounding very much like the proton blast of a neutrona wand...and it snared the double being that had just fled from Shannon Phillips' body...

"What the?" Ray turned.

But the beam couldn't hold...and the Gemini force broke free.

Nodus was thrown back in the aftermath.

"Nodus?" Egon asked, moving toward the man.

"Another time, Doctor Spengler..." Nodus replied, picking himself up and fading from existance. "I have what I came for..."

And then all of them were surrounded by white light...

* * *

Ben King had just made the decision to throw caution to the wind--that whatever was going on at Stonehenge, he simply could not miss it. He got back into his truck, revved up the engine...

And then the unnatural light in the sky faded to the normal dawn level of solar luminescence.

* * *

Vincent awoke in his own bedroom. Everything around him just as it should've been...

_Was it all a dream?!_

Until the door to his room was thrown open, and his parents stood there, his father brandishing a firearm. "Vincent?"

"Father...what happened?"

"I...was just going to ask you the same thing..." Benjamin Belmont replied, lowering the gun.

Vincent was comforted by his mother's embrace...but vague visions continued to trouble him..._What was that thing in my mind? Why did it choose me... _

_And what is it that keeps telling me the Ghostbusters may have the answers to that?_

* * *

Rose Lockyer was sitting in her living room, watching late-night television...ironically enough, David Letterman was showing the Ghostbusters' battle with four deceased tyrants, taped a few hours before her great granddaughter had vanished.

She looked at the phone one more time. There had been no follow-up call from the Ghostbusters. But then, neither had she had the courage to call up Steve Griffin, and let her grandson know of his daughter's odd disappearance.

Except...now she wouldn't need to.

In a blast of purple light, much like the one that had scooped her away, Kylie reappeared.

"Kylie!!!" Rose couldn't help but shout with shock and joy.

"Gran'ma Rose?" Kylie muttered, sounding like she'd just awoken from a deep sleep.

Rose hugged the twelve year old girl tight. She didn't know how she came back...or why she'd been taken in the first place...but she was here now, and that was all that mattered to her.

* * *

**Lafayette, Indiana **

* * *

Fritz turned over in his sleep once more...he hadn't been able to sleep in the two hours since he went to bed. Insomnia was an occassional visitor of his, and he was already pretty sure tonight wasn't going to be any different.

_What in the world happened to Ann?_

He'd called her roomate, and she didn't have the slightest idea. The campus police made a perfunctory search, but really couldn't do much until she'd officially been gone twenty four hours...

He jumped with a start as a knock came at his door.

He opened it to find Ann Fishburne, looking confused. "I..."

"Are you all right?" he finally blurted out. "What happened?"

"I don't know...I was in the cafeteria, eating dinner, and then...next thing I know, it was dark and I was outside..."

Whatever happened, she looked clearly exhausted. He let her lay in his bed, and he called her roomate to let her know Ann was safe before curling up on the couch. _There'll be plenty of time to figure this out later..._

* * *

Ray Stantz realized with a blink he was back in Ghostbusters Central.

The pseudo-proton pack formed from the orange energy was gone. Peter and Winston were right beside him, as was...

"Shannon!!!" a female voice exclaimed and embraced the young boy, now looking fully human once more, the strange costume gone.

"I...Irena? I was running from the creature and then..." he said tentatively.

"Wow am I glad to see you guys..." Louis said, whiping some sweat off his brow. He was dressed, once more, in his green and purple Ghostbuster flight suit, and though he hadn't donned a proton pack, one was sitting next to Janine's desk for easy use.

"Even the ECTO's back..." Winston whistled, and sure enough, the team's ever-trusty vehicle was sitting in it's usual spot.

"Just one problem..." observed. "Where's Egon and Janine?"

* * *

When the light faded around them, Egon and Janine realized they had materialized in her parents' living room. With them was a groggy Victor Irwin.

"Aunt Jay? Yer crushin' me..."

"Deal with it!" she retorted, fighting back tears of joy.

Victor's mother and grandmother--who'd been awakened by the flash of light--weren't so restrained.

As his wife and daughters hugged his grandson threatened to suffocate his grandson in their joy, Fritz Melnitz vigorously shook Egon's hand. "Thanks...I don't know what Niessey and Dee would've done if..."

"It's all over, Mister Melnitz. Um...could I borrow your phone? I think I need to call home..."

* * *

Liz Hawthorne, Barney Lupin, Zandrik Fallagar, and Lilly Peacecraft appeared outside the hotel that the "Inquisitors" had been staying at.

Barney, now back into his human form, mussed the hair of the thirteen year-old girl, who was acting very much as though she'd just come out of a deep sleep.

"Master Eventide?' Liz asked.

The glowing form of the Prince of Warlocks appeared, as before, looking more youthful than the man who'd first joined Fallagar in trying to oppose the Zodiac Lords. _I am here, Child...for another moment or two, anyway..._

"The Ghostbusters didn't realize it...you wouldn't let me tell them..." Liz started to say.

_That I used the power of my own life force to energize them? My sacrifice allowed them to secure the future of all humanity for another two millenia. And allow their own destinies to be fully realized..._

"They are indeed the Five Who Are One..." Fallagar nodded.

"At the Cusp of Oranos, the Stars Will Seek Judgement  
The Twelve stand Marked by their Destinies  
The Five Who Are One Will Stand United Against Them  
And then, When the Enigma Is Revealed   
They Will Stand United with the Restless Warriors  
And Secure the Destiny of Hermes,  
Thus the Ascension of the Children of the Twelve..."

They all turned to Liz.

"It's a prophesy my mater taught me once...knowing the Age of Aquarius...ruled by Oranos--or Uranus--was about to begin..."

_Your mentor was very wise..._

"Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Phineus. I can attest to that--as can Lady Enlightenment, I think..."

_I thank you...I ask one last favor, old friend..._

"Name it."

_Please take care of my cat..._

With that, the spirit of Phineus Eventide departed our plane...

* * *

Nodus sat down in his chair with a notable sigh of satisfaction.

All had unfolded as he had forseen.

But now, he had what might be the key to unravelling the mystery that gnawed at him.

He unclipped a small device from his right gauntlet, and inserted it into a slot on the side of what would look, to untrained eyes, like some kind of high-tech goldfish tank. He pressed the button, and the tank filled with an orange glow.

_A sample of the Gemini force..._ he smirked to himself. _If this will not allow me to find out what went wrong before, and allow me to thus control the Ascension, nothing will..._

* * *

**Postscript  
Ghostbusters Central   
July 31, 1991 **

* * *

Ray smirked to himself as he approached Janine's desk. She looked very tired--despite the fact that they hadn't had a call in three weeks.

_I guess Peter was right--it __**is**__ always the quiet ones..._

"I don't suppose there's been any calls?" he asked brightly

"Of course not." she replied, stifling a yawn.

"You seen Peter?"

"He left with Dana and Oscar a little bit ago." she answered, then started to root through the papers sitting in one pile. "Oh, and I got something for you..."

"Aw, Peter isn't trying to push the bills off on me again, is he?"

She handed him an envelope with a slight smirk. "I suspect you'll find this a lot more interesting than the Con Ed bill..."

He stopped when he read the return address...from an address in Nova Scotia. And the name "E. Hawthorne"

"Um...I think I'll take this with me upstairs...' Ray said, trying (and failing) to not turn bright red.

Janine rolled her eyes and went back to filing her nails.

_Dear Ray _

_Sorry about not writing sooner--it's been rather hectic since the whole thing back in June. I really shouldn't admit this, but a Special Tribunal was convened on the matter and of course I ended up being the star witness, and just about everything that happened that day was discussed, dissected, and analyzed. In addition to the Zodiac Lords themselves, they were interested in Fallagar--not that I blame them. _

_But I think I've said too much. _

_Barney, Lilly, and I've officially parted ways with the Church--the "Inquisitors" (as your friend dubbed us) are no more. I'm sure nobody expected that, right? Barney says he's going to take his severance pay to Las Vegas and try to "strike it rich". Lilly will be staying with me. _

_Here's the bad news: I can't give you any more details right now. I wish I could. But the Order wants me to take on a new project that will mean I won't be able to make it to New York for quite a while. _

_I feel bad about that--I was hoping to find out if Central Park was as beautiful in the summertime as you say it is. _

_Liz _

Ray realized the letter carried the faintest hint of perfume...the same intriguing scent she wore back in Romania...

He breathed in deeply, and sighed...

_Dana's in New York, which means Peter is behaving...Winston's had more time for Kaila. And Egon and Janine are finally making it work... _

_Why not allow myself to hope?_

His reverie was interrupted when he realized that Egon had entered the room. Ray had known him long enough to pick up that the physicist's almost always impassive expression was being augmented by genuine concern.

"I've finally figured out why Slimer's been behaving so strangely..."

Ray's face darkened, all the pleasant thoughts of a moment ago fading due to concern about the status of another of his friends. Slimer had been sluggish and quiet since the battle with the Zodiac Lords. "How bad is it? I mean, he didn't even bear-hug Peter when we got back from England..."

"Slimer is suffering from PK underexposure. He's got a strong emotional connection to this firehouse, which has provided enough of a focus in our reality to keep him corporeal, but I don't think the problem is going to go away anytime soon."

"Problem?"

"It's the same reason we've had maybe five calls since June--I don't know how, but it seems that after the Solstice ambient PKE levels have been at the lowest they've been since I've been recording them. Without ambient PKE, most ectoplasmic entities are too weak to manifest fully in our continuum, and none are crossing over through portals. Slimer's been in our continuum pretty constantly for at least eight years--that and the emotional connection I mentioned earlier anchor him here. But hardly anything else is coming through."

Ray didn't like the sound of that. "No ghosts...nobody needs the Ghostbusters...how long do you think this is going to last?"

"I haven't the faintest clue. Let's pretend this Twinkie represents the normal PK level in the New York area..."

Egon stuck his little finger in one of the holes in the bottom of the snack cake, extracting a small dab of cream filling. "This is this morning's sample."

Ray gasped. "I knew it was bad, but...wow..."

"On the surface, this is a good thing. No demonic overlord is going to want to bother with Earth right now. However..."

"However, if your livelihood is based on chasing ghosts..." Ray continued the thought for him.

Egon nodded, and licked the cream filling off his finger.

"The Ghostbusters are in deep poodoo..."

* * *

_Though this is the end of "The Zodiac Imperative", the fallout from it continues. The next step in the saga is **As Dreams Fade** by Kingpin, which bridges the gap between **The Real Ghostbusters** and **Extreme Ghostbusters**. Read that before the next chapter, the **Zodiac Imperative Epilog** _

_The sagas of Ben King, Vincent Belmont, and the fictional Fritz Baugh continue in the fan fictions of Ghostbusters International_

* * *

Phineus Eventide, Shannon Phillips, and Irena Cortez from the Now comics run. Created by James Van Hise with John Tobias and Howard Bender.  
Inquisitors characters created by Jim (OgreBBQ) Harley  
Thanks to EGB Fan for character development of Kylie Griffin and Rose Lockyer  
Special thanks to Vincent Belmont and Ben King for their advice and allowing me to use them in the story  
Some mystic and werewolf concepts gleefully swiped from White Wolf and Atlas Games  
Zandrik Fallagar created by and © Fritz Baugh

* * *

#3379-42205f kk26  
050 


	6. Epilog

**The Zodiac Imperative  
Epilog:  
Children of Zodiac**

By Fritz Baugh  
Addendum to GBI Case File GBNY-1991-9/280

* * *

** The Winter Solstice  
Venice, Italy  
1991 AD--Ghostbuster Omnibus Timeline Year Nine**

* * *

The building was centuries old--according to the official records, it had been built during the Fifteenth Century under the commission of Giordano DiMedici, a scion of the legendary Venitian merchant family that also gave birth to rulers and popes. 

"The room is sealed?" a soft voice asked.

"It is, Milady." came a reply, accented with Italian.

"If there are no objections, shall we begin?"

"We meet here on the first day of Capricorn in the one thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-fifth year of the Age of Pisces. Which will now also be numbered the first year of the Age of Aquarius."

There were murmurs of agreement.

The center of the room was dominated by a large, round table. It was divided into twelve sectors; at the head of each sector was a symbol, each carved into the table, and painted a different color.

"Let us all account for those present...Lord Aries?"

Sitting behind the red-colored glyph was a craggy man of Latino extraction, wearing a poncho. His dark, unruly hair was usually covered by a sombrero, and there was a perpetual squint in his eye. "Present..." he said in a smooth, deep voice.

"Lady Taurus..."

The woman sitting behind the reddish orange glyph nodded. "Ever an honor, Milady." She was tall, with a high, aristocratic forehead, and pale blonde hair

"Lady Cancer?"

The woman sitting behind the orangish-yellow glyph replied. "As always..." She had dark, curly brown hair with a white streak in the front. She was tall, and sensually proportioned, wearing a simple white dress.

In between the two women was an empty seat, with an orange glyph.

"Lord Leo?"

"Present, Milady." a man of Asian descent, with his own streaks of white in his dark hair. He was wearing an expensive, immaculately tailored suit. The glyph in front of him was yellow.

"Lady Virgo?"

Sitting behind the yellow-green glyph was a woman with elegant features, a long nose, and shoulder-length platinum hair. She was clad in a green garment with an orange cloak, the clasp bearing the image of a tree. She simply nodded. 

"Lord Libra, of course, has provided our meeting place..."

The man sitting behind the green glyph nodded at this, adjusting his glasses. "My honor as always." He was a short man with olive skin, curled black hair, and was dressed in a jacket and scarf in shades of green. 

"Lady Scorpio?"

Silence. The seat behind the aqua blue glyph was empty.

"Has anyone any account of Lady Scorpio?"

"Yes..." Lord Aries answered. "I saw her a half-century ago, at one of the concentration camps set up by the Nazis. She was running it. She escaped me, though, and I lost track of her after the war..."

"I've heard rumor that she's in South America..." Lord Leo added.

"She remains lost to us, I fear. She has become a follower of the Shapeless Evil that has destroyed so much..."

"That is unfortunate. But we shall continue...Lord Saggitarius?"

Behind the blue glyph sat short man with dark, curly hair and a straggly, curly beard (but no mustache). His black clothes that blended into the darkness, revealing nothing of their cut. Only a small gold medallion could be seen, with a small engraved design resembling a poining arrow. "Here, Milady."

"Lady Capricorn."

"You know I never miss these..." the woman behind the dark blue glyph replied, with a bit of a smirk. She had mentioned the "Shapeless Evil" a few moments before. Tall, and in her own way as sensually proportioned as Lady Cancer (who sat opposite her) she nevertheless created an opposite effect with her short, almost severely cut brown hair. Her purple garment couldn't totally hide those curves, but tried.

"Lord Aquarius?"

"I'd think it would be especially mandatory for me, wouldn't it?" He was of average, even slightly scrawny build, dressed in a long purple coat, with khaki pants and a floppy blue tie. His brown hair was a bit shaggy. Pinned to his lapel was an insignia resembling a backwards letter "P". The glyph in front of him was also purple.

"I would say all that are accounted for are present, save Lady Scorpio." the woman who had been taking the roll call finally said. She was of African descent, with short hair, dressed in a simple but elegant tunic of tribal garb. The glyph in front of her was pinkish...and as she sat between Lord Aquarius and Lord Aries, completed the circle.

"I understand, Lady Pisces, that the Age has started then?" Lord Saggitarius asked.

"Lord Aquarius will tell us more, as he witnessed the Judgement. But yes..." 

"Then please...do tell..." Lord Leo said with an edge in his voice. 

"What about the prophesy? We know the Forever Swimmer composed it centuries ago..." Lady Virgo added.

"At the Cusp of Oranos, the Stars Will Seek Judgement  
The Twelve stand Marked by their Destinies  
The Five Who Are One Will Stand United Against Them  
And then, When the Enigma Is Revealed  
They Will Stand United with the Restless Warrior  
And Secure the Destiny of Hermes,  
Thus the Ascension of the Children of the Twelve..."

They all knew that prophesy well. But the fact that Lady Pisces herself felt it necessary to restate it only underscored the urgent tone to the meeting.

"We meet every century, as we always have since there was more than one of us." she continued. "At each Centuriad since the beginning of an Age...and on the first Solstice after the dawn of a new Age..."

With this, Lord Aquarius stood up. "The Avatars of Zodiac inaugurated the Age of Aquarius on the first day of Cancer. I was in my ancestral homeland, near Brandenburg at the time...I had felt the outburst of power, but not having been alive in the first year of the Age of Pisces, I had not experienced it. Phineus Eventide, the Prince of Warlocks, contacted me, and confirmed my suspicions."

"Eventide is not a Childe of Zodiac..." Lady Taurus interrupted with some impatience.

"No. But he is a powerful sorcerer, over three hundred years old." Lord Leo countered. "He serves as primus of House Criamon ..." 

"Correct." Lady Virgo added.

"Eventide and I identified the first manifestation point as Stonehenge." Lord Aquarius continued. "We attempted to follow the example of our forebears in the previous age, and stem the flow of vis to the nexus. We failed, due to the properties of the location..."

"Bonisagus himself once wrote a paper about Stonehenge." Lady Virgo nodded. "The Druids who built it did their job too well..."

"I was defeated, and Eventide was captured. I managed to locate a Hermetic Sodalis--a mystic descendant of my own filia, as luck would have it--but before we could agree on a course of action, these five individuals appeared..."

Lord Aquarius waved his hand, and an image appeared in the center of the table. A short, pudgy man with short auburn hair, wearing a tan jumpsuit with brown trim. A taller, skinnier man with darker hair and a smirk, wearing a brown jump suit with greenish-blue trim. A woman, with firey red hair, and a jumpsuit of light blue and with orange trim. A tall, lanky man with a blond pompador and red-framed eyeglasses, his jumpsuit the same light blue as the woman's, but trimmed in a pale magenta. And a powerfully built man of African descent, his jump suit aqua blue with red trim.

"The Ghostbusters?" Lord Leo finally said.

"Curious..." Lord Libra said, settling back into his chair. "The tall one is the very image of Zedikiah Spengler..."

"If any of you have kept up with mundane news, they first appeared in New York City almost nine years ago. Technically, the woman was their secretary, but also serves as a member of the team in the field when circumstances warrent. As they did on the day of Judgement..."

"Five..." Lady Pisces said quietly. "And that one...he has the very eyes and bearing of Shima-Buku, the ancient king of Tangalla who bound the Undying One..."

"They are the Five Who Are One then...now I understand..." Lord Saggitarius smirked.

"What do you mean by that?" Lord Aries asked.

"The four males were sent on an errand to Castle Vashnivski some weeks before the Solstice. I could feel their importance, but being only four in number I wasn't certain..."

"They indeed were--it was by allowing the Avatars to study them, the Zodiac Lords judged Earth worthy to continue."

Lady Cancer stroked her chin. "I would move we bring Master Eventide before us...and get his perspective on the matter..."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Andra?" Lord Leo rolled his eyes.

"For a man supposedly far removed from mortality, Kenji, you act surprisingly jealous at times..." she retorted with a smile.

Lord Aquarius cleared his throat. "Were that possible...Master Eventide used the last of his life force giving the Five the power they needed to break into the Avatar's circle. His sacrifice allowed them to gain their audience."

It was just then that they noticed Lord Aquarius was not in his seat alone. A black cat, with large green eyes, reclined in his lap. "Eventide's familiar?" Lady Taurus asked.

"Yes. He willed her to me upon his passing..."

"What of the Five?"

"They were returned home when the Avatars departed, as were all of their hosts. but the Five have fractured--their operation shut down only a scant month ago, and they have scattered throughout the United States."

"This makes it more difficult to anticipate..." Lord Libra said. "If they played their role in the Judgement, then they are fated to play a role in the Ascension..."

"But what is that role?" Lady Virgo asked. "And can they still play it while scattered to the four winds?"

"It is difficult to see, even for one with my gifts." Lady Capricorn said. "They did have to close their business once before, but at that time they stayed in close contact. But I know of one thing: I felt a temporal tremor around them some five years ago, an intersection of future and then-present."

"Five years ago...I had a premonition that the Prophesy was nigh..." Lady Pisces added. "I could feel the final Childe, somehow, manifest..."

"Were that I not prohibited from asking my future selves about this..." Lady Capricorn shook her head

"There was an anomaly surrounding them this time." Lord Aquarius finally said, his face hardening. A new image appeared--a man in a black outfit, his face covered by a full mask with a red visor. "This man apparently arranged to get the Ghostbusters to Stonehenge. And he appears to have some knowledge of the existance of the Children--he calls himself 'Nodus' "

" 'Nodus' " Lord Libra repeated. "It's Latin...it means 'Knot' More colloquially, a complication. An unexpected problem... "

" _'the Enigma Is Revealed'_" Lady Taurus exhaled. "Could this man also have a role to play in the Ascension?"

"Nodus..." Lord Saggitarius mused. "That was the name of the man who sent the Ghostbusters to Lord Vashnivski's castle..."

"Ominous." Lord Aries said. "We've gone to great lengths to keep our existance secret...who is he to have found out that much?"

"On the surface, he's but a businessman--a dealer in electronic products. But there is much to wonder about..." Lord Aquarius answered.

"So what do we do now? That's the real question, isn't it?" Lady Virgo finally said.

"We must keep tabs on the Five Who Are One..." Lord Aquarius answered. "I have managed to form a good relationship with my Hermetic descendant; she, in turn, has become close to one of the Five." 

"Might it be one of their offspring?" Lady Cancer asked. 

"None living as yet, or we would sense it. Though..."

"Yes Lord Aquarius?"

"This one here" he pointed to the man in brown and blue. "His lover is the former avatar of Zuul, the minion of the Shapeless Destructor. One child, she has already, a son who was coveted by the undead necromancer Von Hamburg Deutschendorf."

"Barrabi slime..." Lord Leo snarled.

"As both Lord Libra and Lady Pisces have indicated, two more are of notable bloodlines." Lady Capricorn stated. "This one is indeed blood of Mage Zedikiah" indicating the tall man in blue and pink. "And this one is indeed the reincarnation of the Chieftain of Tangalla." indicating the African man in aqua and red.

"What of the other man? And the woman?"

"The last man is descended from Russian and Swedish immigrant families, though there is no sign of anything noticably...exceptional in his heritage, save the presence of Domovyen at his Russian ancestors' domicile. The woman is of the blood of Isaac, and was coveted by a vanity spirit, but she was freed of it's influence almost two years ago."

"One thing is for certain." Lady Pisces shook her head. "They will not fulfill their destiny to the Twelve if they are not as One.

"We must find out who this 'Nodus' person is..." Lord Leo stated. "If he knows anything about us, and the stakes of the Ascension, he's a dangerous variable we cannot allow..."

"But we must also learn--does he have some insight as to the Ghostbusters' role in Lord Gemini's ascension?" Saggitarius countered. "If he knows of us, he probably knows their significance as well--why else send them to where he knew I would be? Why else intervene to make sure they arrive at Stonehenge at the appointed time?"

"And just what is he hoping to accomplish through this?" Lady Taurus chimed in. "It is possible his motives are noble, after all..."

"Possible." Lord Aquarius agreed. "But until we know, we must treat him as a potential complication. I find myself agreeing with Kishiro--we must find out who this man is before we can decide what, if anything, must be done about him." he turned to Lady Pisces. "If that is agreeable, Milady?"

"The Age has turned, Lord of the Steady Wind. The Primordial Waters of the last age retreat, and thus, the decision is yours."

None of them--Lord Aquarius least of all--looked comfortable at that declaration.

"Why look you so surprised? This is the way it is fated to be...before, the Childe of the Age did not yet live...and the last age was indeed mine..." the African woman chided the rest of the group.

"Your wisdom has guided this circle for millenia, Lady Pisces." Lady Capricorn assented. "I trust it now--as I do that of my former filius..."

"I...hope despite my years, I am worthy of your trust. That said then, I move to adjourn the meeting. The next, then, should be at the Summer Solstice in the One Hundredth Year of the Age Of Aquarius...or 2090, for those who prefer mundane time scales."

"I think I shall offer my grove in Greece for that meeting, if you don't mind." Lady Cancer smiled. "Things went quite well there back in 1796..."

Lady Taurus rolled her eyes, but none dissented.

* * *

The meeting over, Lord Aquarius walked Lady Capricorn to her room. He looked rather somber.

"You look concerned, my friend." she finally spoke up.

"We're close, Delphia...so close, but there is so much we don't know. We don't even know what will happen when the circle is complete--we've been too concerned waiting for it to happen, without even thinking what this 'Ascension' means..."

"We will never know until the circle is complete. It is our destiny, either way." She paused for a second. "You are also concerned about this Nodus man, aren't you Zandrik?"

"You know me too well." Lord Aquarius nodded.

She gave him a quick peck to his left cheek, then shut to the door to her room. For a moment, he remembered when he first met her, eight hundred years ago...an utter slip of a boy...and was absolutely awestruck.

_Only one other woman would mean more to me..._ he ruminated, and looked at the sparkling amethyst gem on his right index finger. A promise from a woman long returned to the Earth...

...But mourned still.

* * *

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